Ráth, István

Ráth István

University of Szeged

Declarative mapping between concrete and abstract syntax ofdomain-specific visual languages1István RáthNowadays, the relevance of domain-specific visual languages is rapidly increasing due tothe fact that they enable engineers to better concentrate on the problem itself.In this paper, I present the VIATRADSM framework, a tool developed by Dávid Vágó andmyself at the Department of Measurement and Information Systems of the Budapest Univer-sity of Technology and Economics, which utilizes VIATRA2[2] to provide uniform support forcreating editors, transformations, simulators and code generators for domain specific visuallanguages within the Eclipse framework.The VIATRADSM framework is based on a plug-in architecture in order to enable the user toview the same modelspace from different domain-specific perspectives, which is an importantadvantage over current DSM implementations, since those tools focus on generating a separateeditor program for each domain. VIATRADSM’s tree view-based, syntax-driven editors can beconstructed by simply specifying the domain metamodel (abstract syntax).In most of the current DSM tools, such as MetaEdit+[3], concrete syntax representation isdirectly mapped to the abstract syntax, meaning that logical entities are always visualised asnodes, and logical relationships as edges. This is acceptable for simple languages, howeverour experience has shown that using more complex metamodels, especially those conceivedfor automated model transformations, not only results in visual models being too complicatedto overview, but it can also drain system resources heavily.Thus, modern approaches, such as Eclipse’s Graphical Modeling Framework[4], employ aseparate visualisation metamodel, which describes the structural appearance of diagrams. Thistechnique allows the toolsmith to hide unnecessary detail, however it is still limited in the sensethat classes can only be mapped to nodes and references to edges.The declarative mapping technology presented in this paper, developed for theVIATRADSM framework, extends this idea by using VIATRA2’s graph pattern matching engineto give the language engineer complete freedom to define how models are visualized. Thus,complex mappings such as aggregations can be easily defined using VIATRA2’s native patterndescription language (based on the Visual and Precise Metamodeling[1] language). The goal ofthe research is to provide full declarative support for specifying these mappings, meaning thatlanguage engineers should be able to construct visually appealing and effective tools withoutany manual coding.References[1] D. Varró and A. Pataricza. VPM: A visual, precise and multilevel metamodeling frame-work for describing mathematical domains and UML (The Mathematics of Metamodelingis Metamodeling Mathematics), in: Journal of Software and Systems Modeling, October, 2003.[2] VIATRA2 Framework, An Eclipse GMT Subproject, http://www.eclipse.org/gmt .[3] MetaCase MetaEdit+, http://www.metacase.com[4] General Modeling Framework, http://www.eclipse.org/gmf1This work was partially supported by the SENSORIA European project (IST-3-016004).89

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http://acta.bibl.u-szeged.hu/59884/1/cscs_2006_089.pdf

Declarative mapping between concrete and abstract syntax of domain-specific visual languages

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