375 research outputs found
Bacatá:Notebooks for DSLs, Almost for Free
Context: Computational notebooks are a contemporary style of literate
programming, in which users can communicate and transfer knowledge by
interleaving executable code, output, and prose in a single rich document. A
Domain-Specific Language (DSL) is an artificial software language tailored for
a particular application domain. Usually, DSL users are domain experts that may
not have a software engineering background. As a consequence, they might not be
familiar with Integrated Development Environments (IDEs). Thus, the development
of tools that offer different interfaces for interacting with a DSL is
relevant.
Inquiry: However, resources available to DSL designers are limited. We would
like to leverage tools used to interact with general purpose languages in the
context of DSLs. Computational notebooks are an example of such tools. Then,
our main question is: What is an efficient and effective method of designing
and implementing notebook interfaces for DSLs? By addressing this question we
might be able to speed up the development of DSL tools, and ease the
interaction between end-users and DSLs.
Approach: In this paper, we present Bacat\'a, a mechanism for generating
notebook interfaces for DSLs in a language parametric fashion. We designed this
mechanism in a way in which language engineers can reuse as many language
components (e.g., language processors, type checkers, code generators) as
possible.
Knowledge: Our results show that notebook interfaces generated by Bacat\'a
can be automatically generated with little manual configuration. There are few
considerations and caveats that should be addressed by language engineers that
rely on language design aspects. The creation of a notebook for a DSL with
Bacat\'a becomes a matter of writing the code that wires existing language
components in the Rascal language workbench with the Jupyter platform.
Grounding: We evaluate Bacat\'a by generating functional computational
notebook interfaces for three different non-trivial DSLs, namely: a small
subset of Halide (a DSL for digital image processing), SweeterJS (an extended
version of JavaScript), and QL (a DSL for questionnaires). Additionally, it is
relevant to generate notebook implementations rather than implementing them
manually. We measured and compared the number of Source Lines of Code (SLOCs)
that we reused from existing implementations of those languages.
Importance: The adoption of notebooks by novice-programmers and end-users has
made them very popular in several domains such as exploratory programming, data
science, data journalism, and machine learning. Why are they popular? In (data)
science, it is essential to make results reproducible as well as
understandable. However, notebooks are only available for GPLs. This paper
opens up the notebook metaphor for DSLs to improve the end-user experience when
interacting with code and to increase DSLs adoption
A Multi-Criteria Framework to Assist on the Design of Internet-of-Things Systems
The Internet-of-Things (IoT), considered as Internet first real evolution, has become
immensely important to society due to revolutionary business models with the potential
to radically improve Human life. Manufacturers are engaged in developing embedded
systems (IoT Systems) for different purposes to address this new variety of application
domains and services. With the capability to agilely respond to a very dynamic market
offer of IoT Systems, the design phase of IoT ecosystems can be enhanced. However,
select the more suitable IoT System for a certain task is currently based on stakeholder’s
knowledge, normally from lived experience or intuition, although it does not mean that
a proper decision is being made. Furthermore, the lack of methods to formally describe
IoT Systems characteristics, capable of being automatically used by methods is also an
issue, reinforced by the growth of available information directly connected to Internet
spread.
Contributing to improve IoT Ecosystems design phase, this PhD work proposes a
framework capable of fully characterise an IoT System and assist stakeholder’s on the decision
of which is the proper IoT System for a specific task. This enables decision-makers
to perform a better reasoning and more aware analysis of diverse and very often contradicting
criteria. It is also intended to provide methods to integrate energy consumptionsimulation
tools and address interoperability with standards, methods or systems within
the IoT scope. This is addressed using a model-driven based framework supporting a
high openness level to use different software languages and decision methods, but also
for interoperability with other systems, tools and methods
Variability Modelling Challenges from the Trenches of an Open Source Product Line Re-Engineering Project
Variability models, feature diagrams ahead, have become
commonplace in the software product lines engineering
literature. Whereas ongoing research keeps improving
their expressiveness, formalisation and automation,
more experience reports on their usage in real projects are
needed. This paper describes some challenges encountered
during the re-engineering of PloneMeeting, an Open Source
software family, into a software product line. The main
challenging issues we could observe were (i) the ambiguity
originating from implicit information (missing definitions
of feature labels and unclear modelling viewpoint),
(ii) the necessity of representing spurious features, (iii) the
difficulty of making diagrams and constraints resistant to
change, and (iv) the risks of using feature attributes to represent
large sets of subfeatures. Our study reveals the limitations
of current constructs, and calls for both language
and methodological improvements. It also suggests further
comparative evaluations of modelling alternatives.ComisiĂłn Interministerial de Ciencia y TecnologĂa TIN2006-0047
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