Specification and implementation of application-oriented languages

Application-oriented languages are specialized languages which may be specified and implemented based on general-purpose languages and their implementations. The model used to introduce the specialized languages is based on translation. A simple model supports modifications and extensions of the general language only. An alternative model has an initial phase for defining a semantic basis for the specialized language in the form of a set of abstractions to model the concepts and notions of the application area. This is followed by a phase for translating the syntax for the specialized language to program fragments in the general language, including the semantic basis. The use of specialized languages can be seen as an abstraction process, where several levels of languages (or language parts) are defined. Combined with an interactive programming environment supporting the incremental development of such language levels, the approach may be used as a tool in a supplementary programming model.<
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