MontiCore: a framework for compositional development of domain specific languages |
| |
Authors: | Holger Krahn Bernhard Rumpe Steven Völkel |
| |
Affiliation: | 1. Software Engineering Group, Department of Computer Science 3, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
|
| |
Abstract: | Domain specific languages (DSLs) are increasingly used today. Coping with complex language definitions, evolving them in a
structured way, and ensuring their error freeness are the main challenges of DSL design and implementation. The use of modular
language definitions and composition operators are therefore inevitable in the independent development of language components.
In this article, we discuss these arising issues by describing a framework for the compositional development of textual DSLs
and their supporting tools. We use a redundance-free definition of a readable concrete syntax and a comprehensible abstract
syntax as both representations significantly overlap in their structure. For enhancing the usability of the abstract syntax,
we added concepts like associations and inheritance to a grammar-based definition in order to build up arbitrary graphs (as
known from metamodeling). Two modularity concepts, grammar inheritance and embedding, are discussed. They permit compositional
language definition and thus simplify the extension of languages based on already existing ones. We demonstrate that compositional
engineering of new languages is a useful concept when project-individual DSLs with appropriate tool support are defined. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|