This article presents results of research project Distributed Environment for Cooperation Among Formalisms for Knowledge-based Systems (DECaFf-KB), sponsored by the Brazilian Research Sponsoring Agency CAPES and the British Council. Flavio S. Correa da Silva was partially sponsored by the Brazilian Research sponsoring Agency FAPESP, Grant no.93/0603-01. Wamberto W. Vasconcelos was on a Post-Doctoral leave of absence from Departamento de Estatı́stica e Computação, Universidade Estadual do Ceará, Ceará, Brazil, sponsored by the Brazilian Research Council CNPq, grant no. 201340/91-7. Virginia Brilhante was on leave of absence from Departamento de Ciência da Computação, Universidade do Amazonas, Brazil, sponsored by CAPES, Grant no. BEX 1498/96-7. Ana C.V. de Melo was partially sponsored by the Brazilian Research Sponsoring Agency FAPESP, Grant no. 93/0603-01. Marcelo Finger was partially sponsored by CNPq, Grant no. 300597/95-9. Flavio S. Corea da Silva was partially sponsored by the Brazilian Research Sponsoring Agency FAPESP, grant no. 93/0603-01, and by an ACI grant of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Jaume Agustı́ was partially sponsored by an ACI grant of the Generalitat de Catalunya.

One of the benefits of formally represented knowledge lies in its potential to be shared. Ontologies have been proposed as the ultimate solution to problems in knowledge sharing. However even when an agreed correspondence between ontologies is reached that is not the end of the problems in knowledge sharing. In this paper we explore a number of realistic knowledge-sharing situations and their related problems for which ontologies fall short in providing a solution. For each situation we propose and analyse alternative solutions. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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