Abstract
Textual Syntax (TS) as a form of model representation has made its way to the Model-Driven Software Development community and is considered a viable alternative to graphical representations. To support the design and implementation of text editing facilities many concrete syntax and model mapping tools have emerged. Despite the maturity of these tools, users still spend considerable effort to specify syntaxes and generate editors even for simple metamodels. To reduce this effort, we propose to refine a specification that is automatically derived from a given metamodel. We argue that defaults in a customisable setting enable developers to quickly realise text-based editors for models. In particular in settings where metamodels evolve, such a procedure is beneficial. To evaluate this idea we present EMFText [1], an EMF/Eclipse integrated tool for agile Textual Syntax (TS) development. We show how default syntax can easily be tailored and refined to obtain a custom text editor for EMF models and demonstrate our approach by two examples.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
TU Dresden: Software Technology Group: EMFText (2008), http://emftext.org
Object Management Group: Human Usable Textual Notation (HUTN) Specification. Final Adopted Specification ptc/02-12-01 (2002)
Steinberg, D., Budinsky, F., Paternostro, M., Merks, E.: Eclipse Modeling Framework, 2nd edn. Pearson Education, London (2008)
Aho, A.V., Sethi, R., Ullman, J.D.: Compilers – Principles, Techniques, and Tools. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1986)
Meyer, B.: Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1990)
Kleppe, A.: Software Language Engineering. Pearson Education, London (2009)
The Eclipse Foundation: Eclipse Platform (2008), http://www.eclipse.org
Parr, T.: ANTLR — ANother Tool for Language Recognition — parser generator (October 2008), http://www.antlr.org
TU Dresden: Software Technology Group: EMFText: Concrete Syntax Zoo (2008), http://emftext.org/zoo
Pohl, K., Böckle, G., van der Linden, F.: Software Product Line Engineering: Foundations, Principles, and Techniques. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Kang, K., Cohen, S., Hess, J., Nowak, W., Peterson, S.: Feature-oriented Domain Analysis (FODA) Feasibility Study. Technical Report CMU/SEI-90-TR-21, Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, PA (1990)
Heidenreich, F., Kopcsek, J., Wende, C.: FeatureMapper: Mapping Features to Models. In: Companion Proc. of ICSE 2008. ACM, New York (2008)
The Eclipse Foundation: EMF-based implementation of UML2 metamodel (2008), http://www.eclipse.org/modeling/mdt/?project=uml2
Rose, L.M., Paige, R.F., Kolovos, D.S., Polack, F.: Constructing Models with the Human-Usable Textual Notation. In: Proc. of the MoDELS 2008, Toulouse, France, pp. 249–263 (2008)
Goldschmidt, T., Becker, S., Uhl, A.: Classification of Concrete Textual Syntax Mapping Approaches. In: Schieferdecker, I., Hartman, A. (eds.) ECMDA-FA 2008. LNCS, vol. 5095, pp. 169–184. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Jouault, F., Bézivin, J., Kurtev, I.: TCS: A DSL for the Specification of Textual Concrete Syntaxes in Model Engineering. In: Proc. of GPCE 2006. ACM, New York (2006)
Muller, P.A., Fleurey, F., Fondement, F., Hassenforder, M., Schneckenburger, R., Gérard, S., Jézéquel, J.M.: Model-Driven Analysis and Synthesis of Concrete Syntax. In: Nierstrasz, O., Whittle, J., Harel, D., Reggio, G. (eds.) MoDELS 2006. LNCS, vol. 4199, pp. 98–110. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Scheidgen, M.: Textual Modelling Framework, http://www2.informatik.hu-berlin.de/sam/meta-tools/tef/
Krahn, H., Rumpe, B., Völkel, S.: Efficient Editor Generation for Compositional DSLs in Eclipse. In: Proc. of DSM 2007, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Technical Report TR-38, Jyväskylä University, Finland (2007)
Efftinge, S., Völter, M.: oAW xText: a framework for textual DSLs. In: Workshop on Modeling Symposium at Eclipse Summit (2006)
Scheerder, J., Vinju, J.J., Visser, E.: Disambiguation filters for scannerless generalized lr parsers. In: Horspool, R.N. (ed.) CC 2002. LNCS, vol. 2304, pp. 143–158. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Henriksson, J., Heidenreich, F., Johannes, J., Zschaler, S., Aßmann, U.: Extending Grammars and Metamodels for Reuse: The Reuseware Approach. IET Software 2(3), 165–184 (2008)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Heidenreich, F., Johannes, J., Karol, S., Seifert, M., Wende, C. (2009). Derivation and Refinement of Textual Syntax for Models. In: Paige, R.F., Hartman, A., Rensink, A. (eds) Model Driven Architecture - Foundations and Applications. ECMDA-FA 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5562. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02674-4_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02674-4_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-02673-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-02674-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)