1. © Fraunhofer FIRST Timo Wegeler Towards Quality Assurance of DSL Engineering Vino 2011 19.Juli.2011

2. © Fraunhofer FIRST Seite 2 Problem statement Custom software development requires domain expert‘s knowledge –To communicate requirements –To provide domain characteristics –To define possible test cases Models or languages are useless if domain experts are unable to use them –Being overwhelmed by too much abstraction in syntax and semantics How to identify bad modeling DSL tools are available, but systematic DSL engineering method is not

3. © Fraunhofer FIRST Seite 3 Vision Provide quality assurance of DSL engineering –Engineering process impelled by domain‘ s characteristics and domain expert‘s expertise  Strong influence on DSL design –Enable construction of high-quality DSLs  determine quality criteria Better formalization of requirements using DSLs –Involve domain experts –Use DSLs for generation and testing Better software and verification

4. © Fraunhofer FIRST Seite 4 BIZWARE Project Fraunhofer FIRST TU Berlin, DIMA adesso AG akquinet tech@spree GmbH Cedavis Technology GmbH ClinPath GmbH FMK GmbH Klopotek & Partner GmbH Model Labs GmbH PI Informatik GmbH

5. © Fraunhofer FIRST Seite 5 BIZWARE Goals Ease the development of DSLs –Support a complete DSL engineering and lifecycle process Enable domain experts to be involved in the software development process Generate Test Business growth for partners –Enter new markets

6. © Fraunhofer FIRST Seite 6 Proposed solution and contributions Identify requirements for a framework for a complete DSL engineering and lifecycle process. –How to support evolution –Support rapid prototyping –Supervise a domain expert‘s usage of a DSL prototype during development (framework‘s tracking and assessment components)  Identify preferences and develop an individual metric  Embrace learning effects –Provide a description of the engineering process

7. © Fraunhofer FIRST Seite 7 Results so far Literature Review Partner contacts forged; analysis of their DSL development goals Some requirements for Assessment, Tracking, Repository components

8. © Fraunhofer FIRST Seite 8 Ongoing and future Work Analysis of backgrounds and motivation for DSL developments of the different partners –Currenty 8 different domains, but security-related ones wanted! Development of a metric to measure a domain expert‘s cognitive load Define a process to identify a domain expert‘s modeling preferences Analyze DSL developments Use students to do modeling experiments

9. © Fraunhofer FIRST Seite 9 Quality assurance „Rapid DSL Prototyping“ –Involve domain expert and dsl engineer DSL Testing DSL Debugging Multi Modeling

10. © Fraunhofer FIRST Seite 10 DSL Quality What makes a good DSL? Save seconds for model checking? Help find bugs? Design effort, cost?

11. © Fraunhofer FIRST Seite 11 Far from finished But end of talk. Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Welcome! Thank you.

12. © Fraunhofer FIRST Seite 12 How to validate a DSL development Is the Problem suitable for a DSL development? When is it beneficial to develop a DSL Identify qualitative criteria –Quantitative? Define a process for DSL engineering Shorten the gap between requirements and formalization Apply to the built system –Identify good test cases