This document describes descriptive ontology for finguistic and cognitive engineering (DOLCE) as an ontology that is conformant to the requirements specified for top-level ontologies in ISO/IEC 21838-1.

This document describes DOLCE as a resource designed to support ontology design, ontology integration, and semantic integration of heterogeneous information systems.

The following are within the scope of this document:

—     definitions of classes and relations in the signature of DOLCE;

—     axiomatizations of DOLCE in OWL 2 and CL;

—     documentation of the conformity of DOLCE to the requirements specified for top-level ontologies in ISO/IEC 21838-1;

—     documentation of the methodology for specifying domain ontologies that conform to DOLCE.

The following are outside the scope of this document:

—     specification of ontology languages, including the languages RDF, OWL, and CL standardly used in ontology development;

—     specification of methods for reasoning with ontologies;

—     specification of translators between the notations of ontologies developed in different ontology languages.