This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the Second International Conference on Software Language Engineering, SLE 2009, held in Denver, CO, USA, in October 2009. The 15 revised full papers and 6 revised short paper presented together with 2 tool demonstration papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 75 initial submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on language and model evolution, variability and product lines, parsing, compilation, and demo, modularity in languages, and metamodeling and demo.

Software practitioners are rapidly discovering the immense value of Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) in solving problems within clearly definable problem domains. Developers are applying DSLs to improve productivity and quality in a wide range of areas, such as finance, combat simulation, macro scripting, image generation, and more. But until now, there have been few practical resources that explain how DSLs work and how to construct them for optimal use. Software Language Engineering fills that need. Written by expert DSL consultant Anneke Kleppe, this is the first comprehensive guide to successful DSL design. Kleppe systematically introduces and explains every ingredient of an effective language specification, including its description of concepts, how those concepts are denoted, and what those concepts mean in relation to the problem domain. Kleppe carefully illuminates good design strategy, showing how to maximize the flexibility of the languages you create. She also demonstrates powerful techniques for creating new DSLs that cooperate well with general-purpose languages and leverage their power. Completely tool-independent, this book can serve as the primary resource for readers using Microsoft DSL tools, the Eclipse Modeling Framework, openArchitectureWare, or any other DSL toolset. It contains multiple examples, an illustrative running case study, and insights and background information drawn from Kleppe’s leading-edge work as a DSL researcher. Specific topics covered include Discovering the types of problems that DSLs can solve, and when to use them Comparing DSLs with general-purpose languages, frameworks, APIs, and other approaches Understanding the roles and tools available to language users and engineers Creating each component of a DSL specification Modeling both concrete and abstract syntax Understanding and describing language semantics Defining textual and visual languages based on object-oriented metamodeling and graph transformations Using metamodels and associated tools to generate grammars Integrating object-oriented modeling with graph theory Building code generators for new languages Supporting multilanguage models and programs This book provides software engineers with all the guidance they need to create DSLs that solve real problems more rapidly, and with higher-quality code.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the First International Conference on Software Language Engineering, SLE 2008, held in Toulouse, France, in September 2008. The 16 revised full papers and 1 revised short paper presented together with 1 tool demonstration paper and 2 keynote lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from 106 initial submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on language and tool analysis and evaluation, concrete and abstract syntax, language engineering techniques, language integration and transformation, language implementation and analysis, as well as language engineering pearls.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Software Language Engineering, SLE 2014, held in Västerås, Sweden, in September 2014. The 19 revised full papers presented together with 1 invited paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 61 initial submissions. The papers observe software languages from different and yet complementary perspectives: programming languages, model driven engineering, domain specific languages, semantic web, and from different technological spaces: context-free grammars, object-oriented modeling frameworks, rich data, structured data, object-oriented programming, functional programming, logic programming, term-rewriting, attribute grammars, algebraic specification, etc.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Third International Conference on Software Language Engineering, SLE 2010, held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in October 2010. The 24 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 79 submissions. The book also contains the abstracts of two invited talks. The papers are grouped in topical sections on grammarware, metamodeling, evolution, programming, and domain-specific languages. The short papers and demos included deal with modeling and transformations and translations.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software Language Engineering, SLE 2013, held in Indianapolis, IN, USA, in October 2013. The 17 technical papers presented together with 2 tool demonstration papers and one keynote were carefully reviewed and selected from 56 submissions. SLE’s foremost mission is to encourage, synthesize and organize communication between communities that have traditionally looked at software languages from different and yet complementary perspectives. The papers are organized in topical sections on domain-specific languages; language patterns and evolution; grammars; tools; language analysis; and meta- and megamodelling.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Software Language Engineering, SLE 2011, held in Braga, Portugal, in July 2011. The 18 papers presented together with 4 tool/language demonstration papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. SLE’s foremost mission is to encourage and organize communication between communities that have traditionally looked at software languages from different, more specialized, and yet complementary perspectives. SLE emphasizes the fundamental notion of languages as opposed to any realization in specific technical spaces.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Software Language Engineering, SLE 2012, held in Dresden, Germany, in September 2012. The 17 papers presented together with 2 tool demonstration papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 62 submissions. SLE’s foremost mission is to encourage and organize communication between communities that have traditionally looked at software languages from different, more specialized, and yet complementary perspectives. SLE emphasizes the fundamental notion of languages as opposed to any realization in specific technical spaces.

This book details the conceptual foundations, design and implementation of the domain-specific language (DSL) development system DjDSL. DjDSL facilitates design-decision-making on and implementation of reusable DSL and DSL-product lines, and represents the state-of-the-art in language-based and composition-based DSL development. As such, it unites elements at the crossroads between software-language engineering, model-driven software engineering, and feature-oriented software engineering. The book is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 (“DSL as Variable Software”) explains the notion of DSL as variable software in greater detail and introduces readers to the idea of software-product line engineering for DSL-based software systems. Chapter 2 (“Variability Support in DSL Development”) sheds light on a number of interrelated dimensions of DSL variability: variable development processes, variable design-decisions, and variability-implementation techniques for DSL. The three subsequent chapters are devoted to the key conceptual and technical contributions of DjDSL: Chapter 3 (“Variable Language Models”) explains how to design and implement the abstract syntax of a DSL in a variable manner. Chapter 4 (“Variable Context Conditions”) then provides the means to refine an abstract syntax (language model) by using composable context conditions (invariants). Next, Chapter 5 (“Variable Textual Syntaxes”) details solutions to implementing variable textual syntaxes for different types of DSL. In closing, Chapter 6 (“A Story of a DSL Family”) shows how to develop a mixed DSL in a step-by-step manner, demonstrating how the previously introduced techniques can be employed in an advanced example of developing a DSL family. The book is intended for readers interested in language-oriented as well as model-driven software development, including software-engineering researchers and advanced software developers alike. An understanding of software-engineering basics (architecture, design, implementation, testing) and software patterns is essential. Readers should especially be familiar with the basics of object-oriented modelling (UML, MOF, Ecore) and programming (e.g., Java).

Written by foremost experts in the field, Engineering Modeling Languages provides end-to-end coverage of the engineering of modeling languages to turn domain knowledge into tools. The book provides a definition of different kinds of modeling languages, their instrumentation with tools such as editors, interpreters and generators, the integration of multiple modeling languages to achieve a system view, and the validation of both models and tools. Industrial case studies, across a range of application domains, are included to attest to the benefits offered by the different techniques. The book also includes a variety of simple worked examples that introduce the techniques to the novice user. The book is structured in two main parts. The first part is organized around a flow that introduces readers to Model Driven Engineering (MDE) concepts and technologies in a pragmatic manner. It starts with definitions of modeling and MDE, and then moves into a deeper discussion of how to express the knowledge of particular domains using modeling languages to ease the development of systems in the domains. The second part of the book presents examples of applications of the model-driven approach to different types of software systems. In addition to illustrating the unification power of models in different software domains, this part demonstrates applicability from different starting points (language, business knowledge, standard, etc.) and focuses on different software engineering activities such as Requirement Engineering, Analysis, Design, Implementation, and V&V. Each chapter concludes with a small set of exercises to help the reader reflect on what was learned or to dig further into the examples. Many examples of models and code snippets are presented throughout the book, and a supplemental website features all of the models and programs (and their associated tooling) discussed in the book.