IMPEDIMENTS IN THE USE OF EXPLICIT ONTOLOGIES FOR KBS DEVELOPMENT

This paper explores some of the impediments in the development of libr aries of reusable ontologies First, ontologies generated in multiple a gent environments derive from political processes, As a result, it is impossible to choose an ontology that maximizes the utility of all age nts in the process and the group. An ''ontology impossibility theorem' ' is formulated and discussed. Second, ontologies are not necessarily stationary over relevant time periods, providing an impediment to libr arying ontologies. Third, scaling up ontologies is a difficult matter. Fourth, since each ontology is the result of a political process, it is difficult to interface multiple ontologies. (C) 1997 Academic Press Limited.