Domain specific languages for ad hoc distributed applications
Matthew Fuchs · 1997
The Internet provides a medium to combine human and computational entities together for ad hoc cooperative transactions. To make this possible, there must be aframework allowing all parties (human or other) to communicate with each other. The current framework makes a fundamental distinction between human agents (who use HTML) and computational agents, which use CORBA or COM. We propose DSLs as a means to allow all kinds of agents to \\speak the same language. " In particular we adopt some ideas (and syntax) from SGML/XML, especially the strict separation of syntax and semantics, so each agent in a collaboration is capable of applying a behavioral semantics appropriate to its role (buyer, seller, editor). We develop the example of acard game, where the syntax of the language itself implies some of the semantics of the game.