A Device Description Language (DDL) is a formal language to describe the services and configuration options of field devices in process and factory automation. Almost every fieldbus organization has developed its own standard, usually tailored to the needs of the associated fieldbus engineering tool chain. But these Device Description (DD) files are often unsatisfactory to use in tool chains of other vendors and for other lifecycle phases and do not contain the required information for these lifecycle phases. This paper describes an approach to overcome these shortcomings for IO-Link masters and devices by means of AutomationML.