Meta-Packages: Painless Domain Specific Languages
This addresses the problem of cumbersome DSL creation for software developers, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing meta-modelling concepts.
The paper tackles the limitations of existing approaches to Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) by introducing meta-packages, a meta-modelling method that enables the definition of a wide range of DSLs in a standardized way, allowing for easy processing with existing tools.
Domain Specific Languages are used to provide a tailored modelling notation for a specific application domain. There are currently two main approaches to DSLs: standard notations that are tailored by adding simple properties; new notations that are designed from scratch. There are problems with both of these approaches which can be addressed by providing access to a small meta-language based on packages and classes. A meta-modelling approach based on meta-packages allows a wide range of DSLs to be defined in a standard way. The DSLs can be processed using standard object-based extension at the meta-level and existing tooling can easily be defined to adapt to the new languages. This paper introduces the concept of meta-packages and provides a simple example.