lips: An IDE for Model Driven Engineering Based on Natural Language Processing

Combining both, state-of-the art natural language processing (NLP) algorithms and semantic information offered by a variety of ontologies and databases, efficient methods have been proposed that assist system designers in automatically translating text-based specifications into formal models. But due to ambiguities in natural language, these approaches usually require user interaction. Following these achievements, we consider natural language as a further input language that is used in the design flow for systems and software. Consequently, concepts from integrated development environments (IDE) as they can be found for programming languages such as Java need to be made available for natural language specifications as well. In this paper, we propose lips, an integrated development environment that is seamlessly implemented on top of Eclipse. It contains recent NLP algorithms that extract formal models suited for the Eclipse Modeling Framework and therefore provide a starting point for an ongoing implementation. Whenever user interaction is required, lips makes use of well-known IDE concepts such as markers and quick fixes thereby enabling a holistic user experience.