DOLCE+DnS Ultralite (DUL) OWL Ontology¶
Local reference identifier:
xwkont:ref:gangemi-dulSlug:gangemi-dulEditorial status:candidateCreated:2026-07-01Modified:2026-07-01
Descriptive Metadata¶
| Field | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Title | DOLCE+DnS Ultralite (DUL) | An OWL ontology, not a paper — cited as a primary source document per ADR-0012's provisions for non-paper artifacts. |
| Creator | Aldo Gangemi | Per the ontology's own owl:versionInfo annotation: "Created by Aldo Gangemi as both a simplification and extension of DOLCE and Descriptions and Situations ontologies." |
| Contributor | unknown | |
| Publisher | Ontology Design Patterns (ontologydesignpatterns.org) | |
| Source type | OWL ontology (machine-readable, not a paper) | |
| Version or edition | 4.2 (fetched 2026-07-01) | The file's own revision log (embedded owl:versionInfo comments) documents changes from version 3.2 through 4.2+. |
| Identifier or URL | http://www.ontologydesignpatterns.org/ont/dul/DUL.owl | The InformationObject extension module is at http://www.ontologydesignpatterns.org/ont/dul/IOLite.owl. |
| Access date | 2026-07-01 | |
| Snapshot / Stable identifier | http://web.archive.org/web/20260628191619/http://www.ontologydesignpatterns.org/ont/dul/DUL.owl (2026-06-28) | Verified retrievable via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at time of writing, per ADR-0012. |
| Rights/license | unknown | Not verified in this pass. |
Source Relation Notes¶
DUL is the actively-maintained successor to "DOLCE Lite-Plus" (DLP), not a separate or unrelated artifact. The ontology's own header states this explicitly: "The DOLCE+DnS Ultralite ontology... is a simplification of some parts of the DOLCE Lite-Plus library (cf. http://www.ontologydesignpatterns.org/ont/dul/DLP397.owl)." docs/crosswalks/concepts/information-artifact.md and docs/crosswalks/concepts/quality.md both previously cited "DOLCE Lite Plus" as the (unconfirmed, un-fetched) source of DOLCE's Information Object term; the original DLP397.owl file itself returned an ODP wiki page rather than the raw ontology when fetched in this pass, but DUL — built by the same DOLCE lineage (Aldo Gangemi is also a co-author of xwkont:ref:dolce-borgo-2022) as an explicit simplification of DLP — provides a directly fetchable, directly quotable primary source for the same InformationObject/InformationEntity apparatus. Treat DUL as citable evidence for "the DOLCE-driven Information Object lineage" generally; if DLP397.owl's own text is fetched in a future pass and differs in some detail, note the discrepancy rather than assuming identity.
Rights and License Notes¶
Not verified in this pass. Treat as unknown rather than guessed.
Citation and Locator Notes¶
Recommended citation: Gangemi, A. DOLCE+DnS Ultralite (DUL). OWL ontology. Ontology Design Patterns. http://www.ontologydesignpatterns.org/ont/dul/DUL.owl.
Directly verified 2026-07-01 by fetching the OWL/Turtle source directly (plain-text RDF, no PDF-extraction workaround needed) and grepping for the relevant class definitions.
Key findings used in docs/crosswalks/concepts/information-artifact.md:
- InformationEntity rdfs:subClassOf Entity, comment: "A piece of information, be it concretely realized or not. It is a catchall class, intended to bypass the ambiguities of many data or text that could denote either a an expression or a concrete realization of that expression."
- InformationObject rdfs:subClassOf InformationEntity, SocialObject, owl:disjointWith SocialAgent, comment: "A piece of information, such as a musical composition, a text, a word, a picture, independently from how it is concretely realized."
- InformationRealization rdfs:subClassOf InformationEntity and the union of Event, PhysicalObject, Quality — the concrete-realization counterpart to the abstract InformationObject, connected via the realizes relation.
This confirms the crosswalk's paraphrase that "Information Object... [is a] subclass of Social Object, itself a subclass of Non-Physical Object" is broadly right in spirit (generic dependence, non-physical/social classification) but imprecise in the exact class-name chain — DUL's actual hierarchy is InformationObject → InformationEntity (and separately SocialObject), not through a class literally named "Non-Physical Object."