Meta-Packages: Painless Domain Specific Languages
Tony Clark

TL;DR
This paper introduces meta-packages, a meta-modelling approach that simplifies the creation and processing of domain-specific languages by using a standard, package-based meta-language, enhancing flexibility and tooling compatibility.
Contribution
It proposes a novel meta-packaging approach for DSLs, enabling standard, flexible, and easily adaptable language definitions compared to existing methods.
Findings
Meta-packages facilitate defining diverse DSLs in a standard way.
Existing tooling can be adapted easily to new languages using meta-packages.
The approach addresses limitations of current DSL design methods.
Abstract
Domain Specific Languages are used to provide a tailored modelling notation for a specific application domain. There are currently two main approaches to DSLs: standard notations that are tailored by adding simple properties; new notations that are designed from scratch. There are problems with both of these approaches which can be addressed by providing access to a small meta-language based on packages and classes. A meta-modelling approach based on meta-packages allows a wide range of DSLs to be defined in a standard way. The DSLs can be processed using standard object-based extension at the meta-level and existing tooling can easily be defined to adapt to the new languages. This paper introduces the concept of meta-packages and provides a simple example.
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Taxonomy
TopicsModel-Driven Software Engineering Techniques · Advanced Software Engineering Methodologies · Service-Oriented Architecture and Web Services
