Institute for Computer Science Chair IV: Software

1
How to represent Models, Languages and
Transformations?

• Martin Feilkas
• Workshop on Domain-Specific Modeling
• Oct. 22nd, 2006

2
Whats the difference?
Respresentation
textual
graphical
Usage
parsing
syntax-driven construction
grammar
data model
Defined by
3
BNF ? ER
4
Consequences

• Elimination of redundant information
• ER-modeling is more expressive than context-free
  grammars
• But still not expressive enough, so constraints
  are still needed
• ER-models are easier to modify by ordinary
  developers
• Merging Database synchronisation instead of
  pattern matching

5
Transformation

• Transformation is a way of to specify semantic
  for DSLs (translational semantics)
• Nowadays
• Template-based code-generation
• Weak syntax highlighting
• No syntax-respecting code generation (testing)
• Why? Generator-Backends only know that the target
  language is textual.

6
Transformation

• Translate to the abstract and not to the concrete
  syntax
• No more differentiation between model-to-model
  and model-to-code transformation
• Syntax-driven template specification

Component c ? insert Java-Class(Name k.Name,
Visibility"public") jk insert
Constructor(Name jk.Name) Port (Type
"sender") p ? insert Method(Name
c.Name"_"p.Name) Port (Type
"receiver") p ? insert Method(Name
c.Name"_"p.Name),
insert Method(Name "CS"c.Name"_"p.Name
), insert Attribute(Name p.Name,
Typebool) DataElement d ?
GenAttr GenAttr DataElement d ? insert
Attribute(Name d.Name, Typestring)