The inability of an
ontology
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities ...
to include or encode every concept of interest to users of an
ontology
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities ...
is known as the "content completeness problem". The problem stems from ''the greater expressiveness of natural language relative to the finite enumeration of concepts present in an ontology''. A specific instance of this problem may be temporarily resolved by adding missing concept/s to the target ontology, but this approach is not a general solution because in practice:
# There is a lag time between the appearance and usage of a concept in a domain and its incorporation into an ontology.
# In large ontologies it is difficult to know if the concept is already present
Other workarounds to this problem include the use of post-coordination in ontologies (such as
SNOMED CT
SNOMED CT or SNOMED Clinical Terms is a systematically organized computer-processable collection of medical terms providing codes, terms, synonyms and definitions used in clinical documentation and reporting. SNOMED CT is considered to be the mo ...
) using free text or comment fields to supplement ontology entry systems.
The first usage of the term "content completeness problem" was by Elkin, but it was described by Rogers and Rector
[
] in 1997.
References
Ontology (information science)
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