A Corticon Vocabulary is a rule-modeling component that enables you to define all the business terms required in your rules.

For example, a transport company may have a rule that determines how much cargo each type of vehicle can carry. Two key business terms used in this rule are cargo and vehicle. You can define these terms as Entities in your Vocabulary.

A Vocabulary is similar to a data model such as a Unified Modeling Language (UML) model or an Entity-Relationship model. The terms in the Vocabulary can come from a number of sources—database tables, forms used in business operations, policy and procedure documents, and so on.

When you build a Vocabulary, you define not only the terms, but also the relationships between them. For example, a single vehicle can carry many cargo containers, implying a one-to-many relationship. You define this as an association in your Vocabulary.