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Fusing Modeling and Programming into Language-Oriented Programming

Our Experiences with MPS

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Book cover Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation. Modeling (ISoLA 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 11244))

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Abstract

Modeling in general is of course different from programming (think: climate models). However, when we consider the role of models in the context of “model-driven”, i.e., when they are used to automatically construct software, it is much less clear that modeling is different from programming. In this paper, I argue that the two are conceptually indistinguishable, even though in practice they traditionally emphasize different aspects of the (conceptually indistinguishable) common approach. The paper discusses and illustrates language-oriented programming, the approach to {modeling|programming} we have successfully used over the last 7 years to build a range of innovative systems in domains such as insurance, healthcare, tax, engineering and consumer electronics. It relies on domain-specific languages, modular language extension, mixed notations, and in particular, the Jetbrains MPS language workbench.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://spinroot.com.

  2. 2.

    We intentionally omit the typically following word (Engineering, Development, Software Development or Architecture) because the supposed differences not relevant here.

  3. 3.

    For the purpose of this paper, we ignore the question of how to ensure that this automatic construction process is correct. It is a problem where a theoretically satisfying answer is hard to give, but can be achieved relatively easily in practice.

  4. 4.

    Alternatively, one could implement the system manually and then use tools to ensure consistency with ethe model. However, the author has never seen this approach used in practice.

  5. 5.

    In fact, a major reason why it is so hard to understand and automatically migrate legacy software is exactly this mess.

  6. 6.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarative_programming.

  7. 7.

    It should also be mentioned that we are comparing programming and modeling specifically because this was the “task” set by the ISOLA track. There are other related fields one could compare, such as scripting (Perl, awk, what sysadmins do) and end-user programming (often using Excel, Access or low-code environments). In our opinion these are also basically the same, but also emphasize different aspects because of their unique context and tradition.

  8. 8.

    Formal specification languages such as Z [30], VDM++ [4] or OBJ [7] provide sophisticated means for defining abstractions for downstream analysis. However, these are outside the scope of this paper because they not used in the context of model-driven as defined in this paper.

  9. 9.

    https://www.etas.com/de/products/ascet-developer.php.

  10. 10.

    This refers to a team of engineers at itemis Stuttgart who specialize in language engineering with MPS. Between 2010 and 2018, the team has grown from 2 to 15 people, and we have been developing languages in a wide variety of domains such as healthcare, automotive, aerospace, robotics, finance, embedded software, science and government.

  11. 11.

    https://www.jetbrains.com/mps/.

  12. 12.

    In this context, we consider frameworks a form of library.

  13. 13.

    http://www.joda.org/joda-time/.

  14. 14.

    https://spring.io/.

  15. 15.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_contract.

  16. 16.

    http://www.eusprig.org/horror-stories.htm.

  17. 17.

    https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/de/products/lms/imagine-lab/embedded-software-designer.shtml.

  18. 18.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_concerns.

  19. 19.

    Of course, in some projects it is necessary for organizational reasons to keep some concerns in different tools; typical examples are requirements, architecture models or low-level implementation. There are various ways of integrating external data into MPS, from actual import to stub models to using URLs or other pointers to reference data stored in non-MPS files or other resources.

  20. 20.

    http://savoir.estec.esa.int/SAVOIRDocuments.htm.

  21. 21.

    We have to make more progress in this direction to make MPS suitable for a wider range of domain experts.

  22. 22.

    On the other hand, it is hard to see how a spreadsheet-like approach can be generalized, and made to scale. It is well known that there are serious problems with the quality of spreadsheets. There is probably a reason for the recipe/execution separation.

  23. 23.

    https://2017.splashcon.org/track/live-2017.

  24. 24.

    If the computation is big, it can also be triggered explicitly, avoiding slowing down the type system.

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Acknowledgements

While I wrote the paper, the material discussed in the paper would not have been possible without the team at itemis. So I want to acknowledge everybody who contributed ideas, code, or validation. In addition, I want to thank the MPS team at Jetbrains for building an amazing tool and for helping us use it productively over the years. Finally, Tamas Szabo provided useful feedback on the paper, so I want to thank him specifically. The same thanks goes to my ISOLA reviewers.

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  1. independent/itemis, Stuttgart, Germany

    Markus Voelter

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  1. Markus Voelter
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Correspondence to Markus Voelter .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Tiziana Margaria

  2. TU Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    Bernhard Steffen

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Voelter, M. (2018). Fusing Modeling and Programming into Language-Oriented Programming. In: Margaria, T., Steffen, B. (eds) Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation. Modeling. ISoLA 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11244. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03418-4_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03418-4_19

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-03418-4

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