When and how to develop domain-specific languages

Domain-specific languages (DSLs) are languages tailored to a specific application domain. They offer substantial gains in expressiveness and ease of use compared with general purpose programming languages in their domain of application. DSL development is hard, requiring both domain knowledge and language development expertise. Few people have both. Not surprisingly, the decision to develop a DSL is often postponed indefinitely, if considered at all, and most DSLs never get beyond the application library stage. While many articles have been written on the development of particular DSLs, there is very limited literature on DSL development methodologies and many questions remain regarding when and how to develop a DSL. To aid the DSL developer, we identify patterns in the decision, analysis, design, and implementation phases of DSL development. Our patterns try to improve on and extend earlier work on DSL design patterns, in particular by Spinellis (2001). We also discuss domain analysis tools and language development systems that may help to speed up DSL development. Finally, we state a number of open problems

Component-based systems engineering for autonomous spacecraft

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-51).by Kathryn Anne Weiss.S.M

Software composition with templates

Software composition systems are systems that concentrate on the composition of components. Thes.e systems represent a growi~ subfield of software engineering. Traditional software composition approaches define components as black-boxes. Black-boxes are characterised by their visible behaviour, but not their visible structure. They describe what can be done, rather than how it can be done. Basically, black-boxes are structurally monolithic units that can be composed together via provided interfaces. Growing complexity of software systems and dynamically changing requirements to these systems demand better parameterisation of components. State of the art approaches have tried to increase parameterisation of systems with so-called grey-box components (grey-boxes). These types of components introduced a structural configurability of components. Greyboxes could improve composability, reusability, extensibility and adaptability of software systems. However, there is still there is a big gap between grey-box approaches and business. ,' We see two main reasons for this. Firstly, a structurally non-monolithic nature of grey-boxes results in a significantly increased number of components and relationships that may form a software system. This makes grey-box approaches more complex and their development more expensive. There is a lack of tools to decrease the complexity of grey-box approaches. Secondly, grey-box composition approaches are oriented to the experts with a technical background in programming languages and software architectures. Up to now, state-of-the-art approaches have not addressed the question of their efficient applicability by domain experts with no technical background in programming languages. We consider a structural visibility of grey-boxes gives a chance to provide better externalisation of business logic, so that even a non-expert in programming language could design a software system for hislher special domain. In this thesis, we propose a holistic approach, called Neurath Composition Framework, to compose software systems according to well-defined requirements which have been externalised, giving the ownership of the design to the end-user. We show how externalisation of business logic can be achieved using grey-box composition systems augmented with the domain-specific visual interfaces. We define our own grey-box composition system based on the Parametric Code Templates component model and Molecular Operations composition technique. With this composition system awareness 'of a design, comprehensive development and the reuse of program code templates can be achieved. Finally, we present a sample implementation that shows the applicability of the composition framework to solve real-life business tasks.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo