3. Understanding Concepts in Multiple Ways to Generate New Knowledge
Ontologies provide a layer on top of the data sources which allow for the conceptualization of the domain, and
a way to gain new knowledge. However, how the domain has been conceptualized greatly affects the capability of
knowledge generation. One current limitation is that concepts are defined statically within a domain in what is called
the ontological commitment 9, which becomes the only understanding of the concept in the ontology. This limitation
prohibits the creation of an ontology which can properly represent a domain of an assortment of data sources which
have constantly changing data.
There exists research into attempting multiple ways to understand a concept within a domain. Such as contextual
ontologies that aim to be able to have concepts within an ontology be understood in multiple ways, called contexts 10.
For example, an employee may be understood as one of two ways: in one context (s1) as anyone who has an employee
number, or in another context (s2) as anyone who works for a company. The assertion for an employee in contextual
ontologies would be: