|
|
|
CS 693/793-1C Special Topics in
Domain Specific Languages
Spring 2004
|
Session |
Instructor |
Office hours |
|
Monday, Wednesday, Friday:
Room: CH 430 |
Office: CH 122 Phone: (205) 934-8606 Email: |
By appointment |
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Programming
languages are a programmer's most basic tools. A language is suitable for a
programming problem if it makes the programmer productive, and if it allows the
programmer to write highly scalable, generic, readable and maintainable code.
There are various ways to classify or to group programming languages. One can,
for example, focus on the programming paradigm in such a classification
(imperative vs. functional vs. logic vs. object-oriented). One can also
consider 2GLs, 3GLs, 4GLs, or very high-level languages. We want to emphasize
the division of programming languages into general-purpose and domain-specific
languages. With general-purpose languages, one can address large classes of
problems e.g., scientific computing, business processing, symbolic processing
while a domain-specific language (DSL) facilitates the solution of problems in
a particular domain. To this end, a DSL provides built-in abstractions and notations
specific to the domain of concern. DSLs are usually small, more declarative
than imperative, and more attractive than GPLs for a variety of applications
because of easier programming, systematic reuse and easier verification. DSLs
have been used in various domains and these applications have clearly
illustrated the advantages of DSLs over GPLs in areas such as productivity,
reliability, maintenability and flexibility. However, the cost for DSL design,
development and maintenance has to be taken into account. Without an
appropriate methodology and tools this costs can be higher than savings
obtained by the later use of DSL. This course introduces students to
appropriate methodologies and tools needed to support the development of DSLs.
The
general topics of the course will be:
-
An introduction
to the history of DSLs (including examples of some widely used DSLs)
-
Phases in the
development of DSLs (analysis, design, implementation)
-
Domain Analysis
Methodologies (e.g. FODA Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis)
-
Language design
issues
-
DSLs
implementation approaches (compiler/interpreter, preprocessing, embedded,
extensible compiler/interpreter)
-
Language
development toolkits (ASF+SDF, LISA, metafront, etc.)
-
Incremental
language development
-
DSL design
patterns
-
Domain-Specific
Visual Languages
PREREQUISITES
Programming
languages, compilers
TEXTBOOK
There
is no formal textbook for this course. The course web site will contain a list
of required readings, as well as other related papers/books.
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE
|
Week
1 |
Course
Introduction Programming
Languages, various classifications (imperative
vs. declarative, GPLs vs. DSLs, ...) History
of DSLs |
|
Week
2 |
Phases
in the development of DSLs Domain
Analysis Methodologies (FODA) |
|
Week
3 |
Language
Design Issues (informal vs. formal) |
|
Week
4 |
DSLs
implementation approaches (compiler/interpreter,
preprocessing) |
|
Week
5 |
DSLs
implementation approaches (embedding,
extensible compiler/interpreter) |
|
Week
6 |
Language
development toolkits (LISA) |
|
Week
7 |
Language
development toolkits (ASF+SDF) |
|
Week
8 |
Language
development toolkits (metafront) |
|
Week
9 |
Incremental
Language Development |
|
Week
10 |
DSL
design patterns |
|
Week
11 |
DSL
design patterns |
|
Week
12 |
Spring
break |
|
Week
13 |
Domain-Specific
Visual Languages |
|
Week
14 |
DSL
examples |
|
Week
15 |
DSL
examples |
|
Week
16 |
DSL
examples |
LECTURES
-
Lecture 01 (ppt)
(Introduction, GPL definitions and classifications, DSL definitions)
-
Lecture 02 (ppt)
(GPL concepts values, storage, bindings)
-
Lecture 03-04 (ppt) (GPL concepts abstraction,
encapsulation, type systems, sequencers; DSL concepts)
-
Lecture 05-06 (ppt) (Domain Analysis, FODA)
-
Lecture 07-08 (ppt) (GPL design issues, DSL
design issues)
-
Lecture 09 (ppt)
(DSL implementation approaches, compiler/interpreter approach lexical
analysis)
-
Lecture 10-13 (ppt) (compiler/interpreter
approach syntax analysis, attribute grammars)
-
Lecture 14-16 (ppt) (preprocessing approach
macro processing)
-
Lecture 17-18 (ppt) (preprocessing approach
template meta-programming, expression templates)
-
Lecture 19 (ppt)
(preprocessing approach source-to-source transformation, lexical processing)
-
Lecture 20 (ppt)
(embedding approach)
-
Lecture 21-22 (ppt) (extensible
compiler/interpreter approach)
-
Lecture 23 (ppt)
(XML-based approach)
-
Lecture 24 (ppt)
(hybrid approach)
-
Lecture 25 (ppt)
(resume of implementation approaches)
-
Lecture 26-29 (ppt) (Language development
toolkits LISA)
-
Lecture 30-31 (ppt) (Language development
toolkits ASF+SDF)
-
Lecture 32 (ppt)
(Language development toolkits JTS)
-
Lecture 33 (ppt)
(Language development toolkits metafront)
-
Lecture 34 (ppt)
(Language development toolkits Intentional Programming)
(Language
development toolkits Stratego, TXL)
See Program
Transformation Seminar
-
Lecture 35-37 (ppt) (DSL patterns)
-
Lecture 38-40 (ppt) (Domain-Specific Visual
Languages)
-
Lecture 41-44 (ppt) (DSLs examples)
REQUIRED READINGS
L. Cardelli, R. Davies. Service Combinators for Web Computing.
Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Domain-Specific Languages,
1997.
A. van Deursen, P. Klint. Domain-Specific Language Design Requires Feature
Description, CIT Journal of Computing and Information Technology, Special
Issue on Domain-Specific Languages, Part II, Eds. R. Laemmel, M. Mernik, Vol.
10, No. 1, pages 1-17, 2002.
D. Wile. Lessons Learned from Real DSL Experiments.
HICSS-36, 2003.
J. Paakki. Attribute grammar paradigms - a high-level
methodology in language implementation. ACM Computing Surveys, Vol.
27, No. 2, pages 196-255, 1995. (1st chapter)
J. Bentley. Little Languages. Communications of the ACM,
Vol. 29, No. 8, pages 711-721, 1986.
A. van Deursen, P. Klint, J. Visser. Domain-Specific Languages: An Annotated Bibliography.
ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 35(6):26-36, 2000.
P. Hudak. Modular Domain Specific Languages and
Tools. Proceedings Fifth
International Conference on Software Reuse, pages 134 142, 1998.
C. Consel, R. Marlet. Architecturing software using a methodology
for language development . Proceedings
of the 10th International Symposium on Programming Language Implementation and
Logic Programming, pages 170-194, 1998.
S. Chiba. A Metaobject Protocol for C++.
Conference on Object Oriented
Programming Systems Languages and Applications, pages 285-299, 1995.
Y. Smaragdakis, D. Batory. Application Generators. A survey article
in the Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering.
M. Mernik, M. Lenič, E. Avdičauević, V. umer. Multiple
attribute grammar inheritance. Informatica, 2000, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp.
319-328.
M. van den Brand, J.
Heering, P. Klint, P. Olivier. Compiling Language
Definitions: The ASF+SDF Compiler. ACM Transactions on Programming
Languages and Systems, Vol. 24, No. 4, pages 334-368, 2002.
D. Batory, B. Lofaso, Y. Smaragdakis. JTS: Tools for
implementing domain-specific languages. Proceedings of Fifth International Conference on
Software Reuse, 1998.
C. Brabrand, M.
Schwartzbach, M. Vanggaard. The metafront System:
Extensible Parsing and Transformation, Electronic Notes in Theoretical
Computer Science 82, No. 3, 2003.
O. De Moor. Intentional Programming. Invited talk at
British Computer Society, 2001.
D. Spinellis. Notable design
patterns for domain-specific languages. The Journal of Systems and Software, 56:2001, pp. 91-99.
M. Mernik, J. Heering, T. Sloane. When and how to
develop domain-specific languages. CWI Technical Report, SEN-E0309, 2003.
OPTIONAL
S. Thibault. Domain-Specific
Languages. Conception, Implementation and Application, Ph.D. Thesis, 1998.
K. Czarnecki, U. Eisenecker.
Generative Programming: Methods, Tools, and Applications. Addison-Wesley, 2000.
J. Neighbors. Draco: A Method for
Engineering Reusable Software Systems.
Chapter 12 of Software
Reusability, pages 295 - 319, Addison-Wesley, 1989.
K. Dybvig, R. Hieb, C.
Bruggeman. Syntactic abstraction in Scheme.
Lisp and Symbolic Computations, Vol. 5, No. 4, pages 295-326, 1992.
C. Brabrand, M. Schwartzbach. Growing Languages
with Metamorphic Syntax Macros. ACM
SIGPLAN Workshop on Partial Evaluation and Semantics-Based Program
Manipulation, 2002.
T. Veldhuizen. Using
C++ template metaprograms. C++ Report, Vol. 7, No. 4, pages 36-43, May
1995.
T. Veldhuizen. Expression
Templates. C++ Report, Vol. 7, No. 5, pages 26-31, June 1995.
A. Langer, K. Kreft. C++ Expression
Templates. C/C++ Users Journal, March 2003.
L. Cardelli, F. Matthes, M. Abadi. Extensible
syntax with lexical scoping.
Technical Report, 1994.
C. Elliott. Functional Images. Submitted for publications
in Journal of Functional Programming.
G. Gupta,
E. Pontelli. A Horn Logic Denotational Framework for Specification,
Implementation, and Verification of Domain Specific Languages. Technical Report,
NMSU, 1999.
G. Kiczales, A. Paepcke. Open Implementations and Metaobject Protocols. Tutorial.
H. Kawashima, K. Gondow. Experience with ANSI C Markup Language for a Cross-Referencer.
Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS'03.
C. Elliott, S. Finne, O. de Moor. Compiling Embedded Languages.
Semantics, Applications and Implementation of Program Generation workshop, SAIG2000.
J. Clements, M. Felleisen, R. Findler, M. Flatt, S. Krishnamurthi. Fostering Little Languages. Dr. Dobbs Journal, March
2004.
M. Felleisen, R. Findler, M.
Flatt, S. Krishnamurthi. Building Little Languages With Macros. Dr. Dobbs
Journal, April 2004.
M. Mernik, M. Lenič, E. Avdičauević, V. umer. The Template and
Multiple Inheritance Approach into Attribute Grammars. International
Conference on Computer Languages ICCL98, Chicago, USA, pp. 102 - 110, 1998.
M. Mernik, V. umer. Incremental
Programming Language Development, accepted for publication, Computer
Languages, Systems and Structures, 2004.
E. Van Wyk, O. de Moor, K. Backhouse, P. Kwiatkowski. Forwarding in Attribute
Grammars for Modular Language Design, Proceedings of the 11th International
Conference on Compiler Construction, pages 128 142, 2002.
M. Burnett. Visual Programming. Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics
Engineering, 1999.
R. Esser, J. Janneck. A Framework for Defining Domain-Specific Visual Languages. 1st Workshop on Domain Specific Visual Languages.
G. Costagliola, V.
Deufemia, F. Ferrucci, C. Gravino. Exploiting XPG for Visual Languages:
Definition, Analysis and Development. Electronic
Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, Vol. 82, No. 3, LDTA03, 2003.
S. Mauw, W. Wiersma, T.
Willemse. Language-Driven System Design.
HICSS-35, 2002.
R. A. van Engelen. ATMOL: A Domain-Specific Language for Atmospheric Modeling.
CIT Journal of Computing and Information Technology, Special Issue on
Domain-Specific Languages, Part I, Eds. R. Laemmel, M. Mernik, Vol. 9, No. 4,
pages 289-303, 2001.
HOMEWORKS
1st homework
(identifying DSL concepts) due January 30
2nd homework
(construct and describe feature diagram) due February 4
3rd homework
(attribute grammars) due February 23
4th homework
(design your own DSL) due March 15
Bonus points (LISA tool) due April 5
USEFUL LINKS
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DomainSpecificLanguage
http://compose.labri.fr/documentation/dsl/
http://lambda.weblogs.com/newsItems/viewDepartment$DSL
http://www.csee.wvu.edu/~menzies/pl/dsl101.html
http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/hudak-paul/hudak-dir/dsl/