Eclipse Summit Europe - Domain-Specific Languages with Eclipse Modeling
Abstract
Domain-specific languages (DSLs) are a popular technique in software to eliminate redundancy, reduce syntactic noise, separate concerns and introduce abstractions the host language cannot offer. In this tutorial we present a complete chain of Eclipse Modeling tools to define, process and execute external DSLs.
We start with the definition of the abstract and the concrete textual syntax using an Xtext grammar. From that, we use Xtext's code generator to automatically create a DSL workbench, including an Ecore model for the abstract syntax, a parser and a text editor with syntax highlighting code completion and navigation. We show how to customize the editor and use it to define models. Finally, we orchestrate the model processing components with MWE and write code-generation templates in Xpand. The participants will be introduced to the fundamentals of all these technologies and gather first hands-on experience. They will learn how easy working with DSLs can be and how well it fits into modern agile software development.
Contact
Dr. Jan Köhnlein, Software Architect and Coach
Dr. Jan Köhnlein works as a software architect and coach for itemis in Kiel. He is an expert for model-based software development and holds workshops and lectures on the topics of Eclipse, EMF, GMF and modeling tools.
Dr. Jan Köhnlein leads the open-source projects EMF Index and GMFTools. Furthermore he is also a committer in the Eclipse projects Xtext, Xpand and MWE as well as for openArchitectureWare.
After completing his studies in mathematics at the University of Hamburg, Dr. Jan Köhnlein went on to do a doctorate at the TU Hamburg-Harburg in computer science. Before he reinforced the itemis team, he worked at Gentleware AG among other things as a consultant and coach in the field of modeling.
Karsten Thoms, Software Architect and Coach
Karsten Thoms has been employed by itemis AG for over 6 years as a software architect and coach. His main focus is in the development of individual enterprise systems. Especially in the field of model driven software development, he has made a name for himself as an expert.
He has been active in the openArchitectureWare project for several years now, he is project manager of the Fornax platform, an Eclipse committer and founder of the Fit4oaw project. He regularly passes on his experiences in customer projects, at conferences and as a trainer.
Sebastian Zarnekow, Software Architect
Sebastion Zarnekow works for itemis AG in Kiel. As a co-architect of the language Xtend (http://xtend-lang.org) and the Xtext framework (http://xtext.org), he has specialized in the design of programming languages, their implementation and the development of integrated editors in the Eclipse environment. Sebastian Zarnekow speaks regularly at international conferences and is the author of many professional articles.
Markus Völter, Software Architect and Coach
Markus Völter works as an independent researcher and coach for itemis in Stuttgart, Germany. His focus is on software architecture, model-driven software development and domain specific languages as well as on product line engineering.
Markus also regularly writes (articles, patterns, books) and speaks (trainings, conferences) on those subjects.