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

When Systems Engineering Meets Software Language Engineering

International audienceThe engineering of systems involves many different stakeholders, each with their own domain of expertise. Hence more and more organizations are adopting Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) to allow domain experts to express solutions directly in terms of relevant domain concepts. This new trend raises new challenges about designing DSLs, evolving a set of DSLs and coordinating the use of multiple DSLs for both DSL designers and DSL users. This paper explores various dimensions of these challenges, and outlines a possible research roadmap for addressing them. The message of this paper is also to claim that if language engineering techniques to design any single (disposable) language are mature, the language engineering community needs to fundamentally change its view on software language design. We need to take the next step and adopt the perspective that a software language is, fundamentally, software too and thus the result of a composition of design decisions. These design decisions should be represented as first-class entities in the software languages workbench and it should be possible, during the language lifecycle, to add, remove and change language design decisions with limited effort to go from continuous design to continuous meta-design

Modular DSLs for flexible analysis: An e-Motions reimplementation of Palladio

We address some of the limitations for extending and validating MDE-based implementations of NFP analysis tools by presenting a modular, model-based partial reimplementation of one well-known analysis framework, namely the Palladio Architecture Simulator. We specify the key DSLs from Palladio in the e-Motions system, describing the basic simulation semantics as a set of graph transformation rules. Di erent properties to be analysed are then encoded as separate, parametrised DSLs, independent of the de nition of Palladio. These can then be composed with the base Palladio DSL to generate speci c simulation environments. Models created in the Palladio IDE can be fed directly into this simulation environment for analysis. We demonstrate two main benefits of our approach: 1) The semantics of the simulation and the nonfunctional properties to be analysed are made explicit in the respective DSL speci cations, and 2) because of the compositional de nition, we can add de nitions of new non-functional properties and their analyses.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Systematic literature review of domain-oriented specification techniques

Context: The popularity of domain-specific languages and model driven development has made the tacit use of domain knowledge in system development more tangible. Our vision is a development process where a (software) system specification is based on multiple domain models, and where the specification method is built from cognitive concepts, presumably derived from natural language. Goal: To realize this vision, we evaluate and reflect upon the existing literature in domain-oriented specification techniques. Method: We designed and conducted a systematic literature review on domain-oriented specification techniques. Results: We identified 53 primary studies, populated the classification framework for each study, and summarized our findings per classification aspect. We found many approaches for creating domain models or domain-specific languages. Observations include: (i) most methods are defined incompletely; (ii) none offers methodical support for the use of domain models or domain-specific languages to create other specifications; (iii) there are specification techniques to integrate models in general, but no study offers methodical support for multiple domain models. Conclusion: The results indicate which topics need further research and which can instead be reused to realize our vision on system development. Editor\u27s note: Open Science material was validated by the Journal of Systems and Software Open Science Board