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Using Domain-Specific Languages for Product Line Engineering
Domain specific languages, together with code generation or interpreters (a.k.a. model-driven development), are becoming more and more important. Since there is a certain overhead involved in building languages and processors, this approach is especially useful in environments where a spe-cific set of languages and generators can be reused many times. Product lines are such an environment. Consequently, the use of domain specific languages (DSLs) for Software Product Line Engi-neering (SPLE) is becoming more relevant.
However, exploiting DSLs in the context of product lines involves more than just defining and using languages. This tutorial explains the differences as well as commonalities between model-driven development (MDD) and SPLE and shows how the two approaches can be combined.
In this tutorial we will first recap/introduce feature modeling and model-driven development. We then build a simple textual DSL and a code generator based on Eclipse openArchitectureWare (oAW). Based on this language we’ll discuss the kinds of variability expressible via DSLs versus those expressible via feature modeling, leading to a discussion about ways to combine the two. In the next demo slot we’ll do just that: we’ll annotate a model with feature dependencies. When generating code, the elements whose features are not selected will be removed, and hence no code will be generated. Finally we’ll discuss and demo the integration feature dependencies into code generators to con-figure the kind of code generated from the model.
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Conferences
