EasyTime++: A case study of incremental domain-specific language development

TL;DR

This paper presents EasyTime++, an extended domain-specific language for sports timing that supports incremental development of features like competitor categories and dynamic laps, demonstrated through case studies.

Contribution

It introduces new EasyTime features for classifications and dynamic laps, showing how to incrementally extend the language by reusing existing specifications.

Findings

EasyTime++ effectively models complex sports timing scenarios.

Incremental language extension is feasible and efficient.

Case studies validate the approach's practicality.

Abstract

EasyTime is a domain-specific language (DSL) for measuring time during sports competitions. A distinguishing feature of DSLs is that they are much more amenable to change, and EasyTime is no exception in this regard. This paper introduces two new EasyTime features: classifications of competitors into categories, and the inclusion of competitions where the number of laps must be dynamically determined. It shows how such extensions can be incrementally added into the base-language reusing most of the language specifications. Two case studies are presented showing the suitability of this approach.