Ontology, despite the relative newness of its name, goes back to Aristotle's principal definition of metaphysics as the science of being as being. Christian Wolff divided metaphysics into ontology or general metaphysics on the one hand and three branches of just slightly less general special metaphysics on the other. Husserl renamed the two sides as formal ontology (general) versus regional ontologies (special), while Donald Williams called the former analytic ontology and the latter class="EmphasisTypeItalic ">speculative cosmology. Amid this terminological plethora it is sensible to stay with ontology as the name for the general part. But as the most general part of the most general discipline, how could ontology ever be useful? To see how useful it indeed is when understood sensibly and deployed as a general framework for database ontologies, it suffices to look at Barry Smith's work, not only his philosophical articles but more particularly his impassioned advocacy of realist philosophical ontology as the best framework in the construction and conceptual structuring of databases in all manner of subjects from genetics, medicine and other biomedical sciences to geography and the military. To achieve this penetration, Smith brought decades of work and experience in philosophy and its history, all conducted from a robust realist perspective and drawing on an encyclopedic knowledge of scientific philosophy from the last 150 years, including many of its less well-known corners.