Tool Support For Domain-specific Language Languages
Many General-Purpose Modeling languages already have tool support available in the form of CASE tools. Domain-specific language languages tend to have too small a market size to support the construction of a bespoke CASE tool from scratch. Instead, most tool support for domain-specific language languages is built based on existing domain-specific language frameworks or through domain-specific language environments.
A domain-specific language environment may be thought of as a metamodeling tool, i.e., a modeling tool used to define a modeling tool or CASE tool. The resulting tool may either work within the domain-specific language environment, or less commonly be produced as a separate stand-alone program. In the more common case, the domain-specific language environment supports an additional layer of abstraction when compared to a traditional CASE tool.
Using a domain-specific language environment can significantly lower the cost of obtaining tool support for a domain-specific language language, since a well-designed domain-specific language environment will automate the creation of program parts that are costly to build from scratch, such as domain-specific editors, browsers and components. The domain expert only needs to specify the domain specific constructs and rules, and the domain-specific language environment provides a modeling tool tailored for the target domain.
Most existing domain-specific language takes place with domain-specific language environments, either commercial such as MetaEdit+ or Actifsource, open source such as GEMS, or academic such as GME. The increasing popularity of domain-specific language has led to domain-specific language frameworks being added to existing IDEs, e.g. Eclipse Modeling Project (EMP) with EMF and GMF, or in Microsoft's DSL Tools for Software Factories.
Read more about this topic: Domain-specific Modeling, Domain-specific Modeling Topics
Famous quotes containing the words tool, support, language and/or languages:
“The first tool I step on
Turned into a weapon.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“I concluded that I was skilled, however poorly, at only one thing: marriage. And so I set about the business of selling myself and two children to some unsuspecting man who might think me a desirable second-hand mate, a man of good means and disposition willing to support another man’s children in some semblance of the style to which they were accustomed. My heart was not in the chase, but I was tired and there was no alternative. I could not afford freedom.”
—Barbara Howar (b. 1934)
“Whether we regard the Women’s Liberation movement as a serious threat, a passing convulsion, or a fashionable idiocy, it is a movement that mounts an attack on practically everything that women value today and introduces the language and sentiments of political confrontation into the area of personal relationships.”
—Arianna Stassinopoulos (b. 1950)
“The very natural tendency to use terms derived from traditional grammar like verb, noun, adjective, passive voice, in describing languages outside of Indo-European is fraught with grave possibilities of misunderstanding.”
—Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1934)