Tomaz Kosar

A preliminary study on various implementation approaches of domain-specific language

Various implementation approaches for developing a domain-specific language are available in literature. There are certain common beliefs about the advantages/disadvantages of these approaches. However, it is hard to be objective and speak in favor of a particular one, since these implementation approaches are normally compared over diverse application domains. The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical results from ten diverse implementation approaches for domain-specific languages, but conducted using the same representative language. Comparison shows that these discussed approaches differ in terms of the effort need to implement them, however, the effort needed by a programmer to implement a domain-specific language should not be the only factor taken into consideration. Another important factor is the effort needed by an end-user to rapidly write correct programs using the produced domain-specific language. Therefore, this paper also provides empirical results on end-user productivity, which is measured as the lines of code needed to express a domain-specific program, similarity to the original notation, and how error-reporting and debugging are supported in a given implementation.

Comparing general-purpose and domain-specific languages: An empirical study

Many domain-specific languages, that try to bring feasible alternatives for existing solutions while simplifying programming work, have come up in recent years. Although, these little languages seem to be easy to use, there is an open issue whether they bring advantages in comparison to the application libraries, which are the most commonly used implementation approach. In this work, we present an experiment, which was carried out to compare such a domain-specific language with a comparable application library. The experiment was conducted with 36 programmers, who have answered a questionnaire on both implementation approaches. The questionnaire is more than 100 pages long. For a domain-specific language and the application library, the same problem domain has been used - construction of graphical user interfaces. In terms of a domain-specific language, XAML has been used and C# Forms for the application library. A cognitive dimension framework has been used for a comparison between XAML and C# Forms.

On automata and language based grammar metrics

Grammar metrics have been introduced to measure the quality and the complexity of the formal grammars. The aim of this paper is to explore the meaning of these notions and to experiment, on several grammars of domain specific languages and of general-purpose languages, existing grammar metrics together with the new metrics that are based on grammar LR automaton and on the language recognized. We discuss the results of this experiment and focus on the comparison between grammars of domain specific languages as well as of general-purpose languages and on the evolution of the metrics between several versions of the same language.

On defining quality based grammar metrics

Grammar metrics have been introduced to measure the quality and the complexity of the formal grammars. The aim of this paper is to explore the meaning of these notions and to experiment, on several grammars of domain specific languages and of general purpose languages, existing grammar metrics together with new metrics based on grammar LR automaton and on the produced language. We discuss the results of this experiment and focus on the comparison between domain specific languages and general purpose languages grammars and on the evolution of the metrics between several versions of the same language.

Applying program comprehension techniques to karel robot programs

In the context of program understanding, a challenge research topic1 is to learn how techniques and tools for the comprehension of General-Purpose Languages (GPLs) can be used or adjusted to the understanding of Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs). Being DSLs tailored for the description of problems within a specific domain, it becomes easier to improve these tools with specific visualizations (at a higher abstraction level, closer to the problem level) in order to understand the DSLs programs. In this paper, comprehension techniques will be applied to Karel language. This will allow us to explore the creation of problem domain visualizations for this language and to combine both problem and program domains in order to reach a full understanding of Karel programs.

Grammatical approach to problem solving

We present a grammatical approach to problem solving. It supports formal software specification using attribute grammars, from which a rapid prototype can be generated as well the incremental software development. Domain concepts and relationships among them have to be identified from a problem statement and represented as a context-free grammar. The obtained context-free grammar describes the syntax of a domain-specific language whose semantics is the same as the functionality of the system under implementation. The semantics of this language is then described using attribute grammars from which a compiler is automatically generated. The execution of a particular program written in a domain-specific language corresponds to the execution of a prototype of a system on a particular use-case.

Visual language framework for LISA

Compiler construction is a difficult task. Therefore more suitable solutions than the existent ones are needed. In this paper a framework (domain-specific visual language) for visual language design is presented. The framework automatically generates the compiler/interpreter by using visual notation. The main advantage of this approach is the use of a more appropriate visual notation and abstractions in comparison to classical textual notation of formal language specifications for compiler generators. Special attention is paid to better flexibility and reusability of the predefined semantic constructs