Human Comprehensible and Machine Processable Specifications of Operational Semantics

Abstract

Abstract. This paper presents a method to describe the operational semantics of languages based on their meta-model. We combine the established high-level modelling languages MOF, OCL, and UML activities to create language models that cover abstract syntax, runtime configurations, and the behaviour of runtime elements. The method allows graphical and executable language models. These models are easy to read by humans and are formal enough to be processed in a generic model interpreter. We use Petri-nets as a running example to explain the method. The paper further proposes design patterns for common language concepts. The presented method was applied to the existing modelling language SDL to examine its applicability.

An Integrated Framework to Specify Domain-Specific Modeling Languages

“…In the weaving approaches (Montages, 2007;Scheidgen and Fischer, 2007;Gargantini et al, 2009;Ducasse et al, 2009;Mayerhofer et al, 2013), inspired from the UML action semantics (Semantics, 2001), the behavioral semantics of a modeling language are specified directly in the metamodel of the underlying language by attaching operations to the meta-classes and employing a meta-language, e.g. xOCL (Montages, 2007), QVT (QVT, 2008), for the behavioral specification of these operations.…”

Reusable specification templates for defining dynamic semantics of DSLs

“…The existing work includes studies on metamodel templates (such as [7] and [42]); composition and reuse of concrete syntax (both for textual [29] and graphical notations [38]); and reuse of definitions of the dynamic semantics. For specifying reusable fragments (building blocks) of dynamic semantics and/or weaving/-composing them together, some of the studies use informal (or semiformal) notations: transformation languages (such as Epsilon Object Language, EOL, in [29]), UML activity diagrams (in [43]), and UML state and sequence diagrams (in [23]). …”

xMOF: Executable DSMLs Based on fUML

“…Another possibility is to follow an object-oriented approach by specifying the behavior of operations defined for the metaclasses of a modeling language using a dedicated action language. A plethora of action languages has been proposed including the application of existing GPLs: Kermeta [11], Model Execution Framework (MXF) [15], Smalltalk [5], Eiffel [12], xCore [4], Epsilon Object Language [7], and the approach proposed by Scheidgen and Fischer [14] to name just a few. Our approach follows the same spirit, but instead of introducing yet another action language, we employ fUML.…”

“…The operations defined for the runtime metaclasses are used for specifying the operational semantics by defining a fUML activity for each operation. This approach has the advantage that the syntax of the DSML is separated from its runtime representation [6,14]. The lower part of Figure 2 contains the runtime configuration metamodel of our Petri Net DSML.…”

“…In particular, we argue to use fUML for extending the DSML's metamodel in terms of fUML activities that describe how a model is executed. Existing research has already investigated such a usage of action languages similar to fUML with the result that such semantics specifications are sufficient for this purpose and comprehensible by language designers [14]. However, to establish fUML as a language for specifying the behavioral semantics of DSMLs and leverage the full potential of having a formal semantics specification, the following challenges have to be addressed.…”