Toward an engineering discipline for grammarware

Abstract

Grammarware comprises grammars and all grammar-dependent software. The term grammar is meant here in the sense of all established grammar formalisms and grammar notations including context-free grammars, class dictionaries, and XML schemas as well as some forms of tree and graph grammars. The term grammar-dependent software refers to all software that involves grammar knowledge in an essential manner. Archetypal examples of grammar-dependent software are parsers, program converters, and XML document processors. Despite the pervasive role of grammars in software systems, the engineering aspects of grammarware are insufficiently understood. We lay out an agenda that is meant to promote research on increasing the productivity of grammarware development and on improving the quality of grammarware. To this end, we identify the problems with the current grammarware practices, the barriers that currently hamper research, and the promises of an engineering discipline for grammarware, its principles, and the research challenges that have to be addressed.