It is often necessary to combine objects that were not designed to work together. These objects may be databases of facts, programs, hardware or plans. Even if the objects were intended to be used together, maintenance of adherence to their specifications and ensuring the consistency of terminology through time is often difficult. Each object was developed in a context, and these contexts differ, either slightly or greatly. The terminology within each subcontext is likely to be specialized, and making them work together requires some generalization.
We have described an approach based on our formal theory of context.