Upgrading EasyTime: from a textual to a visual language

TL;DR

This paper introduces EasyTime II, a visual modeling language that simplifies programming for sports timing systems, making it accessible to non-programmers and reducing costs.

Contribution

It presents a new visual domain-specific language (DSML) for EasyTime, improving usability and accessibility over the original textual DSL.

Findings

DSML enables non-programmers to configure timing systems.

Test results show ease of use for sports event organizers.

DSML reduces the need for expensive measuring devices.

Abstract

Measuring time in mass sports competitions is usually performed using expensive measuring devices. Unfortunately, these solutions are not acceptable by many organizers of sporting competitions. In order to make the measuring time as cheap as possible, the domain-specific language (DSL) EasyTime was proposed. In practice, it has been proven to be universal, flexible, and efficient. It can even reduce the number of required measuring devices. On the other hand, programming in EasyTime is not easy, because it requires a domain-expert to program in a textual manner. In this paper, the domain-specific modeling language (DSML) EasyTime II is proposed, which simplifies the programming of the measuring system. First, the DSL EasyTime domain analysis is presented. Then, the development of DSML is described in detail. Finally, the DSML was tested by regular organizers of a sporting competition. This test showed that DSML can be used by end-users without any previous programming knowledge.