Using Domain Specific Languages to Drive Business Applications

Abstract

The need for rapid adaptation of domain applications to ever changing business models has brought industrials to build runtime adaptable, expert-programmable software using home-made techniques and tools. Ongoing research on Adaptive Object-Models and Best–practices in Business Rule Design and Implementation shows that in recurrent cases such applications are built themselves as domain-specific languages, ensuring in this way runtime programmability (and therefore adaptability) of the software.

Themes and goals

A runtime programmable business application is a piece of object-oriented software designed itself as a domain specific language (BSL standing for Business Specific Language). A BSL allows essentially producing and maintaining more easily a family of similar software. For example, some BSLs are able to self-specialize dynamically some of their classes as a way to adapt themselves to domain evolutions. Industrial practitioners have been successfully creating BSLs in real world applications. The goal of our workshop is to mine-out best-practices, patterns and architectures that support BSLs. We would also like to explore the aspects and impacts, problems and successes related to using various object-oriented programming languages in the design and implementation of BSLs.

The topics for the workshop may include, but are not restricted to, the following:

·      Business specific design techniques that support runtime adaptability

·      Features in object-oriented languages that support BSLs

·      Desirable extensions to object-oriented languages

·      When and why designing object-oriented languages with extensibility as a primary consideration helps building BSLs

·      Specific tools for building BSLs

·      BSLs vs MDAs

·      BSLs vs Component programming

·      BSLs maintenance problems (e.g. backward compatibility of the specialisations of a BSLs with the BSL itself)

·      Experience reports with BSLs

The goal of this workshop is to provide a platform for researchers and practitioners interested in dynamically adaptable business software implemented as a domain-specific language, and related approaches, to exchange ideas and experience on how to systematize building these applications. We will work to establish a catalogue of different techniques used and the conditions under which they work better. To achieve this goal we will XXX

Important Dates

•      20 September 2002 (Position Papers Due)
•      11 October 2002 (Notification of Acceptance)
•       Tuesday, 5 November – 8:30-17:00 Full day Workshop

Organizing committee

Ali Arsanjani (Primary contact)

aarsanjani@mum.edu
www.arsanjani.org

Reza Razavi

Laboratoire d'Informatique de Paris 6 (LIP6)

Université Pierre et Marie Curie - CNRS

Case 169 - 4, place Jussieu

75252 PARIS Cedex 05 - FRANCE

Phone :          +33 (0) 1.44.27.87.56

Fax :    +33 (0) 1.44.27.70.00

e-mail :           razavi@acm.fr

WWW Page:  http://AdaptiveModeling.com

Programme committee

Previous workshops

• OOPSLA 2001 2nd Workshop on Best–practices in Business Rule Design and Implementation
• OOPSLA 2000 1st Workshop on Best–practices in Business Rule Design and Implementation
• Tools 2001 Workshop on Component Architectures for Web-based Enterprise Application Development
• Tools 2001 Workshop on Best–practices in Business Rule Design and Implementation
• ECOOP 2001 Workshop on Adaptive Object-Models and Metamodeling Techniques

Pre-workshop activities

how do you plan to get participants involved in the workshop before it begins. For example, posting accepted papers on the web and encouraging participants to read all the papers prior to the workshop. This should include pre-workshop web page activities; that is, what will the workshop' s web page contain, and when?

Planned workshop activities

what is the expected format of the workshop - who will present, for how long, and what will be the format of the presentation? Will there be any introductory material presented by the organizers? Will there be any panel discussion, debate, or focus group in addition to presentations? How will focus groups report back to the other workshop participants?

Post-workshop activities

How will the results of the workshop be disseminated to the larger community? What will be put on the web page as a result of the workshop? How will summaries of discussions, key issues, and shared research agendas be published? What about a workshop summary? May a poster at the poster session be a good idea to publish the results? How will the post workshop activities be shared among the workshop organizers?

Organizer backgrounds

Ali Arsanjani has 19 years industry experience and is a Senior Consulting I/T Architect for IBM's National E-business Application Development Center of Competency were he leads the component-based development and integration competency. Mr. Arsanjani has been architecting n-tier e-business systems based on object and component technology for IBM's larger clients. His areas of experience and research include best-practices for component-based development, business rules modeling and implementation, creation and evolution for reusable assets, extending methods for CBD, building business frameworks and components and incorporating patterns and pattern languages to build resilient and stable software architecures. He has been actively presenting and publishing in these areas for a variety of audiences in industry and academia.

Reza Razavi has been involved in research and industrial development of expert-programmable object-oriented software since 1993. He has been co-organizing workshops on Adaptive Object-Models and Best–practices in Business Rule Design and Implementation at ECOOP and OOPSLA conferences. In collaboration with a team of ecologists at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), he is currently exploring new techniques and tools for building object-oriented modeling environments for non-programmers.