Evolution of Software Systems with Extensible Languages and DSLs

Author

Erdweg, Sebastian ; Fehrenbach, Stefan ; Ostermann, Klaus

Author_Institution

Tech. Univ. Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

Volume

31

Issue

5

fYear

2014

fDate

Sept.-Oct. 2014

Firstpage

68

Lastpage

75

Abstract

Domain-specific languages (DSLs) provide various advantages regarding the maintainability of software systems. Unfortunately, existing software systems don´t exploit DSLs and their maintenance benefits. Based on the extensible programming language SugarJ, the authors present a process for gradually integrating DSLs into existing software systems, report on their experience in integrating three DSLs into two existing software systems, and outline a roadmap for the development of tool support for the integration of DSLs.

Keywords

high level languages; software maintenance; DSL; SugarJ programming language; domain-specific languages; extensible languages; software system evolution; software system maintainability; DSL; Domain specific languages; Embedded systems; Java; Maintenance engineering; Programming; Software systems; Syntactics; SugarJ; domain-specific languages; extensible programming languages; language embedding; legacy applications; software engineering; software evolution; software maintenance;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Software, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0740-7459

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/MS.2014.99

Filename

6840824