Concepts for Model-Driven Design and Evolution of Domain-Specific Languages

Recently a number of concepts, such as software factories, model-driven software development, and language-oriented programming, advocate the use of model-driven domain-specific languages to express domain models. In contrast to many traditional uses of domain-specific languages, this approach leverages the systematic use of domain-specific languages. In this position paper, we identify open issues in this approach, arising when the domain-specific languages are complex or constantly evolving. We introduce the concept of a domain-specific language product line, which provides a common, tailorable language infrastructure to enable the rapid, model-driven creation and evolution of domain-specific languages. Moreover, we propose our vision to use a domain-specific language product line as a conceptual glue between the many concepts and approaches used inside a software factory. 1