A Domain-Specific Language for Defining Static Structure of Database Applications

摘要

In this paper we present DOMMLite - an extensible domain-specific language (DSL) for static structure definition of database-oriented applications. The model-driven engineering (MDE) approach, an emerging software development paradigm, has been used. The language structure is defined by the means of a metamodel supplemented by validation rules based on Check language and extensions based on Extend language, which are parts of the openArchitectureWare framework. The metamodel has been defined along with the textual syntax, which enables creation, update and persistence of DOMMLite models using a common text editor. DSL execution semantics has been defined by the specification and implementation of the source code generator for a target platform with an already defined execution semantics. In order to enable model editing, a textual Eclipse editor has also been developed. DSL, defined in this way, has the capability of generating complete source code for GUI forms with CRUDS (Create-Read-Update-Delete-Search) and navigation operations.