Integrating DSLs into a Software Engineering Process

Abstract

The development of large and complex systems involves many people, stakeholders. Engineeringly speaking, one way to control this complexity is by designing and analyzing the system from different perspectives. For each perspective, stakeholders benefit from means, tools, languages, specific to their activity domain. A Domain Specific Language (DSL) per perspective is such a dedicated means. While DSLs are used for modeling, other means, tools, and languages are needed for other connected activities, like testing or collaborating. However, using such different types of tools together, integrating DSLs into stakeholders’ software process is not straightforward. In this chapter, the authors advance an integration process of DSLs with other tools. The chapter proposes each stakeholder have their own DSL with associated graphical editor, operational semantics, and generation of scripts for off the shelf simulators, e.g., testing. Additionally to the integrated stakeholders’ software process, the authors introduce a model driven process dedicated to the tool vendor which creates the DSLs and its associated tools. Due to the integration of DSLs into this process, they contend that stakeholders will significantly reduce system construction time. The chapter illustrates the two processes on Telecommunications service construction.