The Distributed Ontology, Modeling and Specification Language

There is a diversity of ontology languages in use, among them OWL, RDF, OBO, Common Logic, and F-logic. Related languages such as UML class diagrams, entity-relationship diagrams and object role modelling provide bridges from ontology modelling to applications, e.g. in software engineering and databases. Another diversity appears at the level of ontology modularity and relations among ontologies. There is ontology matching and alignment, module extraction, interpolation, ontologies linked by bridges, interpretation and refinement, and combination of ontologies. The Distributed Ontology, Modelling and Specification Language (DOL) aims at providing a unified meta language for handling this diversity. In particular, DOL provides constructs for (1) “as-is” use of ontologies formulated in a specific ontology language, (2) ontologies formalised in heterogeneous logics, (3) modular ontologies, and (4) links between ontologies. This paper sketches the design of the DOL language. DOL will be submitted as a proposal within the OntoIOp (Ontology Integration and Interoperability) standardisation activity of the Object Management Group (OMG).