ISO 21962:2003 specifies the requirements for establishing a parameter value language (PVL) to be used in the creation of a data entity dictionary (DED).

ISO 21962:2003 is intended to be used by implementers of data entity dictionaries, and for example, by data producers to construct dictionaries that describe, in a more formal manner, data entities within their data products; by data users to understand data received from data producers who have used ISO 21962:2003 to construct their dictionaries; by an organization that mandates the attributes used to define each entity description in dictionaries used within that organization; by a particular community, such as Earth observation, space physics, archives, etc., to establish a degree of standardization for the contents of any data dictionary associated with a data product (this would be done by using ISO 21962:2003 to define a community-wide data dictionary); by organizations and communities to exchange the contents of a data dictionary in a standardized manner, i.e. to facilitate interoperability.