Domain-specific languages

The topic of the thesis are domain-specific languages (DSL) and their use in software development. The target audience are developers interested in learning more about this progressive area of software development. It starts with a necessary theoretical introduction to programming languages. Then, a classification of DSLs is given and software development methodologies based on DSLs are described, notably Language Oriented Programming and Intentional Programming. Another important piece in construction of domain-specific langauges -- the language workbench is also described. In the next chapter, several important tools for DSL creation are presented, described and compared. Each of the tools represents a different possible approach to designing DSLs -- textual, projectional or graphical. The last chapter of the thesis contains a practical example of a DSL implementation in the Meta Programming System by Jet- Brains and Xtext from Eclipse. A domain-specific language for the description of questionnaires is designed from scratch and a code generator for that language is created. A comparison of the DSL based technique to traditional software development techniques is given and the tools used are compared