A DSL Supporting Textual and Graphical Views
Sammanfattning
Domain Specific Languages(DSLs) are languages that are designed to be used in a particular
development area. These languages aim to help developers solve the problems
related to that domain and therefore contain information and jargons that are only relevant
to a particular domain. Domain specific languages can be expressed in textual
or graphical formats. Apart from personal preferences there are several advantages of
using graphical format and also several advantages of using textual format. Therefore
having a DSL that supports both of these notations will mean harvesting the advantages
of all of them. However most of the tools available that enable the use of domain specific
languages tend to focus on either textual or graphical editors for the DSL. The aim of
this thesis is to investigate the possibility of having both notations for the same DSL in
use. The thesis was conducted using action research method at Ericsson AB. Ericsson
is currently having a DSL that has only a graphical notation. This DSL is using UML
and UML Profiles. A prototype of the textual version of the existing DSL was created
using Xtext and used to make an analysis and come up with findings on how a DSL with
both graphical (which is in UML) and textual notations can be used. Transformations
that enable switching from one view of the model to another have also been prototyped
and used for analysis. The thesis also investigated two other solutions that are based on
EMF using Xtext for text and GMF for the graphical notation. This thesis concludes
that with all the alternatives investigated, it is possible to have a DSL that supports
both graphical and textual views. Each solution however varies in the effort needed to
implement and maintain the DSL.
Examinationsnivå
Student essay