The Universe of Discourse

The universe of discourse is the subject of the database or model: the part of the ``world'' under discussion (the term is also used in linguistics, at least by Eco ). There is no need for the universe of discourse to model concrete objects, or even part of the natural world: fantasy board games are an excellent example of a complicated universe of discourse. Nor is there a requirement that the universe of discourse completely map all aspects of the subject world, though many databases adopt the additional assumption that they are complete representations (the ``closed world'' assumption).

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