Analysable software language translations

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Engenharia Informática

The most difficult tasks in the Software Language Engineering (SLE) process, are the design of the semantics of a Domain Specific Modeling Language (DSML), its implementation (typically in a form of a compiler), and also its verification and validation. On the one hand, the choice of the appropriate level of abstraction when designing a DSML’s semantics, affects directly its usability, and the potential for its analysis. On the other hand, in practice, not only the compiler’s implementation, but also its verification and validation are performed manually, while having as reference the DSML’s semantic models. The challenge of this research work is to apply a complete model driven software development approach in the tasks of designing a DSML’s semantics, implementing, verifying and validating DSMLs’ compilers. This involves the choice of the most appropriate abstraction levels, and the design and development of adequate tools to support SLE practitioners on these tasks. This thesis reports: i) the design and implementation of formal languages (and associated tools) to support the task of DSML’s semantics design (i.e., DSLTrans and SOS); ii) the automatic generation of DSMLs’ compilers based on translation specifications; and iii) automated validation of DSMLs’ semantic designs based on the analysis of translation specifications. Finally, the approach presented in this thesis is illustrated with the design and implementation of a real life DSML.