Towards the Black-Box Aggregation of Language Components
Jérôme Pfeiffer, Andreas Wortmann · 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems Companion (MODELS-C) · 2021
Engineering software languages demands considering many different aspects, including syntax, semantics, tooling, variability, usability, and many more. Engineering efficiency depends largely on our capability of reusing language parts in other contexts. Currently, most language reuse focuses on few isolated aspects. We have devised the component-based SCOLAR framework for the novel integrated reuse of concrete syntax, abstract syntax, well-formedness rules, and code generators. SCOLAR supports black-box embedding of language parts, yielding composed languages, and, consequently, models (e.g., expressions embedded into Statecharts). This is insufficient when aiming to integrate languages such that their models should be loosely coupled only. We, therefore, present an extension of SCOLAR towards the black-box integration of language components through language aggregation, yielding a loose coupling between their models (e.g., Statecharts referring to class diagram types). To this end, we analyzed the requirements for language aggregation and devised compact extensions to SCOLAR to also support the latter. This enables a novel integration of language components through aggregation, which can facilitate reusing software languages and, hence, advance their application.