A domain-specific language (DSL) is a

computer language A computer language is a formal language used to communicate with a computer. Types of computer languages include: * Software construction#Construction languages, Construction language – all forms of communication by which a human can Comput ...

specialized to a particular application domain. This is in contrast to a

general-purpose language A general-purpose language is a computer language that is broadly applicable across Domain (software engineering), application domains, and lacks specialized features for a particular domain. This is in contrast to a domain-specific language (DSL), ...

(GPL), which is broadly applicable across domains. There are a wide variety of DSLs, ranging from widely used languages for common domains, such as

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

for web pages, down to languages used by only one or a few pieces of software, such as MUSH soft code. DSLs can be further subdivided by the kind of language, and include domain-specific ''markup'' languages, domain-specific ''modeling'' languages (more generally,

specification language A specification language is a formal language in computer science used during systems analysis, requirements analysis, and systems design to describe a system at a much higher level than a programming language, which is used to produce the exec ...

s), and domain-specific ''programming'' languages. Special-purpose computer languages have always existed in the computer age, but the term "domain-specific language" has become more popular due to the rise of domain-specific modeling. Simpler DSLs, particularly ones used by a single application, are sometimes informally called mini-languages. The line between general-purpose languages and domain-specific languages is not always sharp, as a language may have specialized features for a particular domain but be applicable more broadly, or conversely may in principle be capable of broad application but in practice used primarily for a specific domain. For example,

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

was originally developed as a text-processing and glue language, for the same domain as AWK and

shell script A shell script is a computer program designed to be run by a Unix shell, a command-line interpreter. The various dialects of shell scripts are considered to be command languages. Typical operations performed by shell scripts include file manipu ...

s, but was mostly used as a general-purpose programming language later on. By contrast,

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it c ...

is a

Turing-complete In computability theory, a system of data-manipulation rules (such as a model of computation, a computer's instruction set, a programming language, or a cellular automaton) is said to be Turing-complete or computationally universal if it can be ...

language, and in principle can be used for any task, but in practice is narrowly used as a page description language.

Use

The design and use of appropriate DSLs is a key part of domain engineering, by using a language suitable to the domain at hand – this may consist of using an existing DSL or GPL, or developing a new DSL. Language-oriented programming considers the creation of special-purpose languages for expressing problems as standard part of the problem-solving process. Creating a domain-specific language (with software to support it), rather than reusing an existing language, can be worthwhile if the language allows a particular type of problem or solution to be expressed more clearly than an existing language would allow and the type of problem in question reappears sufficiently often. Pragmatically, a DSL may be specialized to a particular problem domain, a particular problem representation technique, a particular solution technique, or other aspects of a domain.

Overview

A domain-specific language is created specifically to solve problems in a particular domain and is not intended to be able to solve problems outside of it (although that may be technically possible). In contrast, general-purpose languages are created to solve problems in many domains. The domain can also be a business area. Some examples of business areas include: * life insurance policies (developed internally by a large insurance enterprise) * combat simulation * salary calculation * billing A domain-specific language is somewhere between a tiny programming language and a

scripting language In computing, a script is a relatively short and simple set of instructions that typically automation, automate an otherwise manual process. The act of writing a script is called scripting. A scripting language or script language is a programming ...

, and is often used in a way analogous to a

programming library In computing, a library is a collection of System resource, resources that can be leveraged during software development to implement a computer program. Commonly, a library consists of executable code such as compiled function (computer scienc ...

. The boundaries between these concepts are quite blurry, much like the boundary between scripting languages and general-purpose languages.

In design and implementation

Domain-specific languages are languages (or often, declared syntaxes or grammars) with very specific goals in design and implementation. A domain-specific language can be one of a visual diagramming language, such as those created by the Generic Eclipse Modeling System, programmatic abstractions, such as the Eclipse Modeling Framework, or textual languages. For instance, the command line utility grep has a

regular expression A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp), sometimes referred to as rational expression, is a sequence of characters that specifies a match pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" ...

syntax which matches patterns in lines of text. The sed utility defines a syntax for matching and replacing regular expressions. Often, these tiny languages can be used together inside a

shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses Science Biology * Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...

to perform more complex programming tasks. The line between domain-specific languages and

s is somewhat blurred, but domain-specific languages often lack low-level functions for filesystem access, interprocess control, and other functions that characterize full-featured programming languages, scripting or otherwise. Many domain-specific languages do not compile to byte-code or executable code, but to various kinds of media objects: GraphViz exports to

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

, etc., where Csound compiles to audio files, and a ray-tracing domain-specific language like POV compiles to graphics files.

Data definition languages

data definition language In the context of SQL, data definition or data description language (DDL) is a syntax for creating and modifying database objects such as tables, indices, and users. DDL statements are similar to a computer programming language for defining d ...

like SQL presents an interesting case: it can be deemed a domain-specific language because it is specific to a specific domain (in SQL's case, accessing and managing relational databases), and is often called from another application, but SQL has more keywords and functions than many scripting languages, and is often thought of as a language in its own right, perhaps because of the prevalence of database manipulation in programming and the amount of mastery required to be an expert in the language. Further blurring this line, many domain-specific languages have exposed APIs, and can be accessed from other programming languages without breaking the flow of execution or calling a separate process, and can thus operate as programming libraries.

Programming tools

Some domain-specific languages expand over time to include full-featured programming tools, which further complicates the question of whether a language is domain-specific or not. A good example is the functional language

XSLT XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a language originally designed for transforming XML documents into other XML documents, or other formats such as HTML for web pages, plain text, or XSL Formatting Objects. These formats c ...

, specifically designed for transforming one XML graph into another, which has been extended since its inception to allow (particularly in its 2.0 version) for various forms of filesystem interaction, string and date manipulation, and data typing. In

model-driven engineering Model-driven engineering (MDE) is a software development methodology that focuses on creating and exploiting domain models, which are conceptual model (computer science), conceptual models of all the topics related to a specific problem. Hence, i ...

, many examples of domain-specific languages may be found like OCL, a language for decorating models with assertions or QVT, a domain-specific transformation language. However, languages like UML are typically general-purpose modeling languages. To summarize, an analogy might be useful: a Very Little Language is like a knife, which can be used in thousands of different ways, from cutting food to cutting down trees. A domain-specific language is like an electric drill: it is a powerful tool with a wide variety of uses, but a specific context, namely, putting holes in things. A General Purpose Language is a complete workbench, with a variety of tools intended for performing a variety of tasks. Domain-specific languages should be used by programmers who, looking at their current workbench, realize they need a better drill and find that a particular domain-specific language provides exactly that.

Domain-specific language topics

External and Embedded Domain Specific Languages

DSLs implemented via an independent interpreter or compiler are known as ''External Domain Specific Languages''. Well known examples include TeX or AWK. A separate category known as ''Embedded (or Internal) Domain Specific Languages'' are typically implemented within a host language as a library and tend to be limited to the syntax of the host language, though this depends on host language capabilities.

Usage patterns

There are several usage patterns for domain-specific languages: * Processing with standalone tools, invoked via direct user operation, often on the command line or from a

Makefile In software development, Make is a command-line interface software tool that performs actions ordered by configured Dependence analysis, dependencies as defined in a configuration file called a ''makefile''. It is commonly used for build automati ...

(e.g., grep for regular expression matching, sed, lex, yacc, the

GraphViz Graphviz (short for ''Graph Visualization Software'') is a package of open-source software, open-source tools initiated by AT&T Labs, AT&T Labs Research for Graph drawing, drawing graph (discrete mathematics), graphs (as in Vertex (graph theory ...

toolset, etc.) * Domain-specific languages which are implemented using programming language macro systems, and which are converted or expanded into a host general purpose language at compile-time or realtime * As embedded domain-specific language (eDSL) also known as an internal domain-specific language, is a DSL that is implemented as a library in a "host" programming language. The embedded domain-specific language leverages the syntax, semantics and runtime environment (sequencing, conditionals, iteration, functions, etc.) and adds domain-specific primitives that allow programmers to use the "host" programming language to create programs that generate code in the "target" programming language. Multiple eDSLs can easily be combined into a single program and the facilities of the host language can be used to extend an existing eDSL. Other possible advantages using an eDSL are improved

type safety In computer science, type safety and type soundness are the extent to which a programming language discourages or prevents type errors. Type safety is sometimes alternatively considered to be a property of facilities of a computer language; that ...

and better IDE tooling. eDSL examples: SQLAlchemy "Core" an SQL eDSL in Python, jOOQ an SQL eDSL in

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

, LINQ's "method syntax" an SQL eDSL in C# an
kotlinx.html
an

eDSL in Kotlin. * Domain-specific languages which are called (at runtime) from programs written in general purpose languages like C or

, to perform a specific function, often returning the results of operation to the "host" programming language for further processing; generally, an interpreter or

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulator, emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve ...

for the domain-specific language is embedded into the host application (e.g. format strings, a regular expression engine) * Domain-specific languages which are embedded into user applications (e.g., macro languages within spreadsheets) and which are (1) used to execute code that is written by users of the application, (2) dynamically generated by the application, or (3) both. Many domain-specific languages can be used in more than one way. DSL code embedded in a host language may have special syntax support, such as regexes in sed, AWK, Perl or JavaScript, or may be passed as strings.

Design goals

Adopting a domain-specific language approach to software engineering involves both risks and opportunities. The well-designed domain-specific language manages to find the proper balance between these. Domain-specific languages have important design goals that contrast with those of general-purpose languages: * Domain-specific languages are less comprehensive. * Domain-specific languages are much more expressive in their domain. * Domain-specific languages should exhibit minimal redundancy.

Idioms

In programming,

idioms An idiom is a phrase or expression that largely or exclusively carries a figurative or non-literal meaning, rather than making any literal sense. Categorized as formulaic language, an idiomatic expression's meaning is different from the lit ...

are methods imposed by programmers to handle common development tasks, e.g.: * Ensure data is saved before the window is closed. * Edit code whenever command-line parameters change because they affect program behavior. General purpose programming languages rarely support such idioms, but domain-specific languages can describe them, e.g.: * A script can automatically save data. * A domain-specific language can parameterize command line input.

Examples

Examples of domain-specific programming languages include

Logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name that it represents, as in ...

for pencil-like drawing,

Verilog Verilog, standardized as IEEE 1364, is a hardware description language (HDL) used to model electronic systems. It is most commonly used in the design and verification of digital circuits, with the highest level of abstraction being at the re ...

and

VHDL VHDL (Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program, VHSIC Hardware Description Language) is a hardware description language that can model the behavior and structure of Digital electronics, digital systems at multiple levels of abstraction, ran ...

hardware description languages,

MATLAB MATLAB (an abbreviation of "MATrix LABoratory") is a proprietary multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementat ...

and

GNU Octave GNU Octave is a scientific programming language for scientific computing and numerical computation. Octave helps in solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a language that is mostly ...

for matrix programming,

Mathematica Wolfram (previously known as Mathematica and Wolfram Mathematica) is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allows machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network ...

Maple ''Acer'' is a genus of trees and shrubs commonly known as maples. The genus is placed in the soapberry family Sapindaceae.Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 9, June 2008 nd more or less continuously updated si ...

and Maxima for symbolic mathematics, Specification and Description Language for reactive and distributed systems,

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in c ...

formulas and macros, SQL for

relational database A relational database (RDB) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured for ...

queries,

YACC Yacc (Yet Another Compiler-Compiler) is a computer program for the Unix operating system developed by Stephen C. Johnson. It is a lookahead left-to-right rightmost derivation (LALR) parser generator, generating a LALR parser (the part of a co ...

grammars for creating parsers,

regular expressions A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp), sometimes referred to as rational expression, is a sequence of character (computing), characters that specifies a pattern matching, match pattern in string (computer science), text. Usually ...

for specifying lexers, the Generic Eclipse Modeling System for creating diagramming languages, Csound for sound and music synthesis, and the input languages of

and GrGen, software packages used for graph layout and graph rewriting, Hashicorp Configuration Language used for Terraform and other

Hashicorp HashiCorp, Inc. is an American software company with a freemium business model based in San Francisco, California. HashiCorp provides tools and products that enable developers, operators and security professionals to provision, secure, run and co ...

tools,

Puppet A puppet is an object, often resembling a human, animal or Legendary creature, mythical figure, that is animated or manipulated by a person called a puppeteer. Puppetry is an ancient form of theatre which dates back to the 5th century BC in anci ...

also has its own configuration language.

GameMaker Language

The GML scripting language used by GameMaker Studio is a domain-specific language targeted at novice programmers to easily be able to learn programming. While the language serves as a blend of multiple languages including

Delphi Delphi (; ), in legend previously called Pytho (Πυθώ), was an ancient sacred precinct and the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient Classical antiquity, classical world. The A ...

, C++, and

BASIC Basic or BASIC may refer to: Science and technology * BASIC, a computer programming language * Basic (chemistry), having the properties of a base * Basic access authentication, in HTTP Entertainment * Basic (film), ''Basic'' (film), a 2003 film ...

. Most of functions in that language after compiling in fact calls runtime functions written in language specific for targeted platform, so their final implementation is not visible to user. The language primarily serves to make it easy for anyone to pick up the language and develop a game, and thanks to GM runtime which handles main game loop and keeps implementation of called functions, few lines of code is required for simplest game, instead of thousands.

ColdFusion Markup Language

ColdFusion's associated scripting language is another example of a domain-specific language for data-driven websites. This scripting language is used to weave together languages and services such as Java, .NET, C++, SMS, email, email servers, http, ftp, exchange, directory services, and file systems for use in websites. The ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) includes a set of tags that can be used in ColdFusion pages to interact with data sources, manipulate data, and display output. CFML tag syntax is similar to HTML element syntax.

FilterMeister

FilterMeister is a programming environment, with a programming language that is based on C, for the specific purpose of creating Photoshop-compatible image processing filter plug-ins; FilterMeister runs as a Photoshop plug-in itself and it can load and execute scripts or compile and export them as independent plug-ins. Although the FilterMeister language reproduces a significant portion of the C language and function library, it contains only those features which can be used within the context of Photoshop plug-ins and adds a number of specific features only useful in this specific domain.

MediaWiki templates

The ''Template'' feature of

MediaWiki MediaWiki is free and open-source wiki software originally developed by Magnus Manske for use on Wikipedia on January 25, 2002, and further improved by Lee Daniel Crocker,mailarchive:wikipedia-l/2001-August/000382.html, Magnus Manske's announc ...

is an embedded domain-specific language whose fundamental purpose is to support the creation of page templates and the transclusion (inclusion by reference) of MediaWiki pages into other MediaWiki pages.

Software engineering uses

There has been much interest in domain-specific languages to improve the productivity and quality of

software engineering Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining Application software, software applications. It involves applying engineering design process, engineering principl ...

. Domain-specific language could possibly provide a robust set of tools for efficient software engineering. Such tools are beginning to make their way into the development of critical software systems. The Software Cost Reduction Toolkit is an example of this. The toolkit is a suite of utilities including a specification editor to create a requirements specification, a dependency graph browser to display variable dependencies, a consistency checker to catch missing cases in

well-formed formula In mathematical logic, propositional logic and predicate logic, a well-formed formula, abbreviated WFF or wff, often simply formula, is a finite sequence of symbols from a given alphabet that is part of a formal language. The abbreviation wf ...

s in the specification, a model checker and a theorem prover to check program properties against the specification, and an invariant generator that automatically constructs invariants based on the requirements. A newer development is language-oriented programming, an integrated software engineering

methodology In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for bri ...

based mainly on creating, optimizing, and using domain-specific languages.

Metacompilers

Complementing language-oriented programming, as well as all other forms of domain-specific languages, are the class of compiler writing tools called

metacompiler In computer science, a compiler-compiler or compiler generator is a programming tool that creates a parser, interpreter, or compiler from some form of formal description of a programming language and machine. The most common type of compiler- ...

s. A metacompiler is not only useful for generating

parser Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is a process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar by breaking it into parts. The term '' ...

s and code generators for domain-specific languages, but a

itself compiles a domain-specific metalanguage specifically designed for the domain of

metaprogramming Metaprogramming is a computer programming technique in which computer programs have the ability to treat other programs as their data. It means that a program can be designed to read, generate, analyse, or transform other programs, and even modi ...

. Besides parsing domain-specific languages, metacompilers are useful for generating a wide range of software engineering and analysis tools. The meta-compiler methodology is often found in program transformation systems. Metacompilers that played a significant role in both computer science and the computer industry include Meta-II, and its descendant TreeMeta.

Unreal Engine before version 4 and other games

Unreal and Unreal Tournament unveiled a language called UnrealScript. This allowed for rapid development of modifications compared to the competitor Quake (using the Id Tech 2 engine). The Id Tech engine used standard C code meaning C had to be learned and properly applied, while UnrealScript was optimized for ease of use and efficiency. Similarly, more recent games have introduced their own specific languages for development. One more common example is Lua for scripting.

Rules engines for policy automation

Various

business rules engine A business rules engine is a software system that executes one or more business rules in a runtime production environment. The rules might come from legal regulation ("An employee can be fired for any reason or no reason but not for an illegal r ...

s have been developed for automating policy and business rules used in both government and private industry.

ILOG ILOG S.A. was an international software company purchased and incorporated into IBM announced in January, 2009. It created enterprise software products for supply chain, business rule management, visualization and optimization. The main product ...

, Oracle Policy Automation, DTRules, Drools and others provide support for DSLs aimed to support various problem domains. DTRules goes so far as to define an interface for the use of multiple DSLs within a rule set. The purpose of business rules engines is to define a representation of business logic in as human-readable fashion as possible. This allows both

subject-matter expert A subject-matter expert (SME) is a person who has accumulated great knowledge in a particular field or topic and this level of knowledge is demonstrated by the person's degree, licensure, and/or through years of professional experience with the su ...

s and developers to work with and understand the same representation of the business logic. Most rules engines provide both an approach to simplifying the control structures for business logic (for example, using declarative rules or decision tables) coupled with alternatives to programming syntax in favor of DSLs.

Statistical modelling languages

Statistical modelers have developed domain-specific languages such as R (an implementation of the S language), Bugs, Jags, and Stan. These languages provide a syntax for describing a Bayesian model and generate a method for solving it using simulation.

Generate model and services to multiple programming Languages

Generate object handling and services based on an Interface Description Language for a domain-specific language such as JavaScript for web applications, HTML for documentation, C++ for high-performance code, etc. This is done by cross-language frameworks such as

Apache Thrift Thrift is an IDL (interface definition language, Interface Definition Language) and Binary protocol, binary communication protocol used for defining and creating service (systems architecture), services for programming languages. It was developed ...

or Google Protocol Buffers.

Gherkin

Gherkin is a language designed to define test cases to check the behavior of software, without specifying how that behavior is implemented. It is meant to be read and used by non-technical users using a natural language syntax and a line-oriented design. The tests defined with Gherkin must then be implemented in a general programming language. Then, the steps in a Gherkin program acts as a syntax for method invocation accessible to non-developers.

Other examples

Other prominent examples of domain-specific languages include: * Game Description Language * OpenGL Shading Language *

Gradle Gradle is a build automation tool for multi-language software development. It manages tasks like compilation, packaging, testing, deployment, and publishing. Supported languages include Java (as well as JDK-based languages Kotlin, Groovy, Sc ...

ActionScript ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (mean ...

Advantages and disadvantages

Some of the advantages: * Domain-specific languages allow solutions to be expressed in the idiom and at the level of abstraction of the problem domain. The idea is that domain experts themselves may understand, validate, modify, and often even develop domain-specific language programs. However, this is seldom the case. * Domain-specific languages allow validation at the domain level. As long as the language constructs are safe any sentence written with them can be considered safe. * Domain-specific languages can help to shift the development of business information systems from traditional software developers to the typically larger group of domain-experts who (despite having less technical expertise) have a deeper knowledge of the domain. * Domain-specific languages are easier to learn, given their limited scope. Some of the disadvantages: * Cost of learning a new language * Limited applicability * Cost of designing, implementing, and maintaining a domain-specific language as well as the tools required to develop with it ( IDE) * Finding, setting, and maintaining proper scope. * Difficulty of balancing trade-offs between domain-specificity and general-purpose programming language constructs. * Potential loss of processor

efficiency Efficiency is the often measurable ability to avoid making mistakes or wasting materials, energy, efforts, money, and time while performing a task. In a more general sense, it is the ability to do things well, successfully, and without waste. ...

compared with hand-coded software. * Proliferation of similar non-standard domain-specific languages, for example, a DSL used within one insurance company versus a DSL used within another insurance company. * Non-technical domain experts can find it hard to write or modify DSL programs by themselves. * Increased difficulty of integrating the DSL with other components of the IT system (as compared to integrating with a general-purpose language). * Low supply of experts in a particular DSL tends to raise labor costs. * Harder to find code examples.

Tools for designing domain-specific languages

* JetBrains MPS is a tool for designing domain-specific languages. It uses projectional editing which allows overcoming the limits of language parsers and building DSL editors, such as ones with tables and diagrams. It implements language-oriented programming. MPS combines an environment for language definition, a language workbench, and an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for such languages. * MontiCore is a language workbench for the efficient development of domain-specific languages. It processes an extended grammar format that defines the DSL and generates Java components for processing the DSL documents. * Xtext is an open-source software framework for developing programming languages and domain-specific languages (DSLs). Unlike standard parser generators, Xtext generates not only a parser but also a class model for the abstract syntax tree. In addition, it provides a fully featured, customizable Eclipse-based IDE. The project was archived in April 2023. * Racket is a cross-platform language toolchain including native code, JIT and JavaScript compiler, IDE (in addition to supporting Emacs, Vim, VSCode and others) and command line tools designed to accommodate creating both domain-specific and general purpose languages.

References

External links

*
Minilanguages
, '' The Art of Unix Programming,'' by Eric S. Raymond
Martin Fowler on domain-specific languages
an

Also i
a video presentation

Domain-Specific Languages: An Annotated Bibliography

* ttp://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/dsl97 Usenix Association: Conference on Domain-Specific Languages (DSL '97)an
2nd Conference on Domain-Specific Languages (DSL '99)

The complete guide to (external) Domain Specific Languages

jEQN
example of internal Domain-Specific Language for the Modeling and Simulation of Extended Queueing Networks. ; Articles
External DSLs with Eclipse technology
*
Using Acceleo with GMF : Generating presentations from a MindMap DSL modeler

UML vs. Domain-Specific Languages
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Domain-Specific Language Programming language classification

Use