DOLCE, the first top-level (foundational) ontology to be axiomatized, has remained stable for twenty years and today is broadly used in a variety of domains. DOLCE is inspired by cognitive and linguistic considerations and aims to model a commonsense view of reality, like the one human beings exploit in everyday life in areas as diverse as socio-technical systems, manufacturing, financial transactions and cultural heritage. DOLCE clearly lists the ontological choices it is based upon, relies on philosophical principles, is richly formalized, and is built according to well-established ontological methodologies, e.g. OntoClean. Because of these features, it has inspired most of the existing top-level ontologies and has been used to develop or improve standards and public domain resources (e.g. CIDOC CRM, DBpedia and WordNet). Being a foundational ontology, DOLCE is not directly concerned with domain knowledge. Its purpose is to provide the general categories and relations needed to give a coherent view of reality, to integrate domain knowledge, and to mediate across domains. In these 20 years DOLCE has shown that applied ontologies can be stable and that interoperability across reference and domain ontologies is a reality. This paper briefly introduces the ontology and shows how to use it on a few modeling cases.

翻译：DOLCE作为首个被公理化的顶层（基础）本体论，二十年来保持稳定，如今广泛应用于多学科领域。该本体受认知与语言学考量启发，旨在模拟人类在日常生活及社会技术系统、制造业、金融交易、文化遗产等多元领域中运用的常识性现实视角。DOLCE明确列示其本体论选择依据，遵循哲学原理，具备高度形式化特征，并依据OntoClean等成熟本体方法论构建。基于上述特性，DOLCE启发了现存多数顶层本体，并已用于开发或改进标准及公共领域资源（如CIDOC CRM、DBpedia和WordNet）。作为基础本体，DOLCE不直接关涉领域知识，其核心在于提供构建现实统一认知框架所需的一般性范畴与关系，实现领域知识整合及跨域协调。二十年实践表明，应用本体可保持稳定性，参考本体与领域本体间的互操作已成为现实。本文简要介绍该本体，并通过若干建模案例展示其应用方法。