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DSL for existing descriptive language


Hi everyone.

At first I have to admit that I'm a newbie in the wide world of DSL. So, maybe my question is a bit obvious for some of you.
For the project I work in my company (that is a component-based framework, based on .NET 2.0), I'm working on a solution generator for customer projects. We already created a description language in XML for the abstraction of the application. Based on this file, a complete VS solution is generated.
To create this XML file, I want now to create a designer and was directed to the DSL tools. But after some hours of working through the walkthroughs and trying to find a solution, I'm stuck. What I want to achieve is a DSL model, that results in the same XML schema that we already have realized.

This looks about:

<Solution Name="SampleApp">
<Assembly Name="SampleApp.Common">
<Component Name="TestComponent">
<ContractInterface>xxx</ContractInterface>
...
</Assembly>
<Assembly Name="SampleApp.Business">
<Component Name="TestComponent">
<Implementation>xxx</Implementation>
...
</Assembly>
...
</Solution>

At the and, the designer should handle Shapes for "Solution", "Assembly", "Component" etc.
Could you give me some advice?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Best regards
swissclash79




Christian Schweizer - Junior Software Engineer - ELCA Informatics AG
swissclash79

Hi,

I had the same task. What I would suggest is to create XSLT transformation and convert your metamodel to dsl one. After that you probably will need to customize serealization and shapes. So it means that this XSLT just help you to migrate most of your metamodel element to DSL.

Eugene.

Evgeny Popov

Hi Eugene

Thanks a lot for your suggestion. I thought about the same.

Best regards

swissclash79




Christian Schweizer - Junior Software Engineer - ELCA Informatics AG
swissclash79

Hi swissclash

I think if you're able to migrate your format then the approach Evgeny suggests is definitely the best.

If you're stuck with your current format and unable to change, then although the XML customization isn't strong enough in V1 to exactly match any xml format, there is an override point to completely replace the serialization with a handwritten custom serializer to read/write your format.




Gareth Jones - Developer - DSL Tools & Software Factories Platform [MSFT]
GarethJ - MSFT
reply 4

You can use google to search for other answers

 

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