is a Ontology.
DOLCE (Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering) is a foundational (upper-level) ontology developed and maintained by the Laboratory for Applied Ontology at ISTC-CNR. It distinguishes endurants, perdurants, qualities and abstracts, is axiomatized in first-order logic, and has been stable since its 2002/2003 release in the WonderWeb project. Since 2023 it is part 3 of the ISO/IEC 21838 standard for top-level ontologies, which ships OWL 2 and Common Logic axiomatizations. Lighter OWL re-engineerings, DOLCE-Lite and DOLCE+DnS Ultralite (DUL), are widely used to align domain ontologies.
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| ID | Name | URL | Category | Format | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| dolce.iso-owl | DOLCE OWL (ISO/IEC 21838-3) | Dolce.owl (36.5 KB) | Ontology | owl | OWL 2 axiomatization of DOLCE (functi... |
| dolce.iso-clif | DOLCE Simple CLIF (ISO/IEC 21838-3) | dolce_simple_clif.p (15.7 KB) | Ontology | txt | Common Logic (CLIF) axiomatization of... |
| dolce.lite | DOLCE-Lite OWL | DOLCE-Lite.owl (104.3 KB) | Ontology | owl | DOLCE-Lite, an OWL (RDF/XML) re-engin... |
| dolce.lite-plus | DOLCE Lite-Plus 3.97 Library | DLP3971.zip (254.9 KB) | Ontology | owl | DOLCE Lite-Plus library (version 3.97... |
| dolce.dul | DOLCE+DnS Ultralite (DUL) | DUL.owl (182.5 KB) | Ontology | ttl | DOLCE+DnS Ultralite (DUL) version 4.2... |
| dolce.d18 | WonderWeb Deliverable D18 | D18.pdf (1.7 MB) | Documentation | WonderWeb Deliverable D18, the final ... | |
| dolce.overview | DOLCE Overview | overview.html | Documentation | http | LOA overview page for DOLCE, with lin... |
| ID | Name | URL | Category | Format | Relation | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| proton.ontology ⚠ | PROTON 3.0 Beta Specification | Proton-Ver3.0B.pdf (708.2 KB) | Documentation | was influenced by | PDF specification of PROTON 3.0 Beta,... | |
| proton.top | PROTON Top Module | download.ttl.gz (11.8 KB) | Ontology | ttl | was influenced by | PROTON Top module (version 3.0) in Tu... |
DOLCE, the Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering, is a foundational ontology from the Laboratory for Applied Ontology (LOA) at ISTC-CNR. It was the first module of the WonderWeb Foundational Ontologies Library, alongside OCHRE and BFO, and has been stable since its 2002/2003 release. Its official documentation is WonderWeb Deliverable D18, which gives the first-order axiomatization.
DOLCE has a cognitive bias: its categories follow distinctions found in natural language and common sense. Its top-level split separates endurants (objects), perdurants (events and processes), qualities and abstracts.
No single license is stated for DOLCE or its LOA-hosted OWL files. The ISO electronic inserts carry the ISO licence terms. The Crossref title of the 2022 Applied Ontology paper ends in a footnote marker (“engineering1”), and the page keeps it so the publication cache matches.
Created: October 04, 2026 | Last modified: October 04, 2026