A DSL Supporting Textual and Graphical Views

Abstract

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.