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

By: Contributor(s): Material type: ArticleArticleSeries: ^p Datos electrónicos (1 archivo : 1040 KB)Subject(s): Online resources: Summary: 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. c2007 Elsevier B.V. -- Keywords: Domain-specific languages; Embedded approach; Preprocessing; Compiler/interpreter; Compiler/interpreter generator; Extensible compiler/interpreter; Commercial-Off-The-Shelf.
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Formato de archivo: PDF. -- Este documento es producción intelectual de la Facultad de Informática-UNLP (Colección BIPA / Biblioteca.) -- Disponible también en línea (Cons. 20/03/2009)

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. c2007 Elsevier B.V. -- Keywords: Domain-specific languages; Embedded approach; Preprocessing; Compiler/interpreter; Compiler/interpreter generator; Extensible compiler/interpreter; Commercial-Off-The-Shelf.

Information and Software Technology 2008 50 (5), pp. 390-405.