The Distributed Ontology Language (DOL): Use Cases, Syntax, and Extensibility
This work addresses interoperability issues for knowledge engineers and ontology developers, but it appears incremental as it focuses on standardizing and extending an existing framework.
The paper presents the Distributed Ontology Language (DOL), which tackles the problem of integrating ontologies across heterogeneous logics and modular structures by providing a unified framework, and it demonstrates its features for enabling interoperability and reusability in knowledge engineering environments.
The Distributed Ontology Language (DOL) is currently being standardized within the OntoIOp (Ontology Integration and Interoperability) activity of ISO/TC 37/SC 3. It aims at providing a unified framework for (1) ontologies formalized in heterogeneous logics, (2) modular ontologies, (3) links between ontologies, and (4) annotation of ontologies. This paper presents the current state of DOL's standardization. It focuses on use cases where distributed ontologies enable interoperability and reusability. We demonstrate relevant features of the DOL syntax and semantics and explain how these integrate into existing knowledge engineering environments.