Introduction to the Literature On Programming Language Design

This is an introduction to the literature on programming language design and related topics. It is intended to cite the most important work, and to provide a place for students to start a literature search

Introduction to the Literature on Programming Language Design

This is an introduction to the literature on programming language design and related topics. It is intended to cite the most important work, and to provide a place for students to start a literature search

Open Programming Language Interpreters

Context: This paper presents the concept of open programming language interpreters and the implementation of a framework-level metaobject protocol (MOP) to support them. Inquiry: We address the problem of dynamic interpreter adaptation to tailor the interpreter's behavior on the task to be solved and to introduce new features to fulfill unforeseen requirements. Many languages provide a MOP that to some degree supports reflection. However, MOPs are typically language-specific, their reflective functionality is often restricted, and the adaptation and application logic are often mixed which hardens the understanding and maintenance of the source code. Our system overcomes these limitations. Approach: We designed and implemented a system to support open programming language interpreters. The prototype implementation is integrated in the Neverlang framework. The system exposes the structure, behavior and the runtime state of any Neverlang-based interpreter with the ability to modify it. Knowledge: Our system provides a complete control over interpreter's structure, behavior and its runtime state. The approach is applicable to every Neverlang-based interpreter. Adaptation code can potentially be reused across different language implementations. Grounding: Having a prototype implementation we focused on feasibility evaluation. The paper shows that our approach well addresses problems commonly found in the research literature. We have a demonstrative video and examples that illustrate our approach on dynamic software adaptation, aspect-oriented programming, debugging and context-aware interpreters. Importance: To our knowledge, our paper presents the first reflective approach targeting a general framework for language development. Our system provides full reflective support for free to any Neverlang-based interpreter. We are not aware of any prior application of open implementations to programming language interpreters in the sense defined in this paper. Rather than substituting other approaches, we believe our system can be used as a complementary technique in situations where other approaches present serious limitations

Project-Team RMoD 2013 Activity Report

Activity Report 2013 Project-Team RMOD Analyses and Languages Constructs for Object-Oriented Application Evolutio

Automatic Verification of Transactions on an Object-Oriented Database

In the context of the object-oriented data model, a compiletime approach is given that provides for a significant reduction of the amount of run-time transaction overhead due to integrity constraint checking. The higher-order logic Isabelle theorem prover is used to automatically prove which constraints might, or might not be violated by a given transaction in a manner analogous to the one used by Sheard and Stemple (1989) for the relational data model. A prototype transaction verification tool has been implemented, which automates the semantic mappings and generates proof goals for Isabelle. Test results are discussed to illustrate the effectiveness of our approach

Meta-programming composers in 2nd generation component systems

Future component systems will require that components can be composed flexibly. In contrast to current systems which only support a fixed set of composition mechanisms, the component system should provide a composition language in which users can define their own specific composers. It is argued for an object-oriented setting that this will be possible by meta-programming the class-graph. Composers will be based on two important elements. First, they will express coupling by graph-based operators which transform parts of the class-graph (coupling design patterns). Second, during these transformations, elementary meta-operators will be used to transform data and code, rearranging slots and methods of parameter-components. Thus during their reuse, components are queried by introspection and transformed by meta-programming. Composers that use meta-programming generalize connectors in architectural languages. Hence they encapsulate context-dependent aspects of a system, and make components independent of their embedding context. Since meta-programming composers may change behavior of components transparently, meta-programming composers will lead to a nice form of grey-box reuse, which supports embedding of components (and classes) into application contexts in a new and flexible way

Object-oriented data modeling

The object-oriented paradigm models local behavior, and to a lesser extent, the structure of a problem. Semantic data models describe structure and semantics. This thesis unifies the behavioral focus of the object-oriented paradigm with the structural and semantic focus of semantic data models. The approach contains expressive abstractions to model static and derived data, semantics, and behavior. The abstractions keep the data model closer to the problem domain, and can be translated into a relational (or other) implementation. The paper makes six contributions. First, a comprehensive set of data structuring abstractions are described. Second, the abstractions are compared to the entity-relationship and relational models. Third, semantic information inherent in the functional representation of the abstractions is identified. Fourth, a set of behavioral abstractions are described. Fifth, an algorithm that describes the dynamics between mathematically derived attributes of cooperating objects is presented. Sixth, weaknesses of object-oriented programming languages are identified