Domain Specific Languages (II)

Creating a Domain Specific Language

If you've installed the Visual Studio 2008 SDK, there will be some new project templates available for you to use when you choose New Project in Visual Studio. Select the Domain-Specific Language Designer project type, which can be found underneath Other Project Types and Extensibility. Choose a name for your project (MyDslSample), make sure it will be saved in a suitable location and then click OK. The Domain-Specific Language Designer wizard will appear and guide you through the process of creating a DSL solution.

The first step is to choose one of the solution templates. By choosing the template that most closely resembles the language that you want to create, you can minimize the modifications that you have to make to the starting solution. The solution templates that are available are:

• Class Diagrams: use this template if your DSL includes entities and relationships that have properties. This template creates a DSL that resembles UML class diagrams.
• Component Models: use this template if your DSL includes components, that is, parts of a software system. This template creates a DSL that resembles UML component diagrams.
• Task Flow: use this template if your DSL includes workflows, states, or sequences. This template creates a DSL that resembles UML activity diagrams.
• Minimal Language: use this template if your DSL does not resemble the other templates. This template creates a DSL that has two classes and one relationship.

Create a minimal language DSL and give it a name (MyDslSample). The wizard will register a new file type for models in your language. Therefore you should choose a file extension that is unique to your system. Accept the default icon for the model files, as it can be changed later if necessary. Accept the default values for the product name, company name, and top level namespace that will be used in the solution. Sign your assembly with a strong key name, review your choices and then click Finish. Visual Studio will create a solution consisting of two projects:

• Dsl, defines the DSL and its editing and processing tools.
• DslPackage, determines how the language tools integrate with Visual Studio.

After the solution is created, a large amount of code is generated automatically from the DSL description file (DslDefinition.dsl) by applying a custom tool called TextTemplatingGenerator to the files in T4 format.