A Generic Model of Execution for Synthesizing Interpreted Domain-Specific Models

The prevalent application of domain-specific modeling languages (DSMLs) requires developers to initially specify the requirements for a software product as a domain-specific model then transform that model to a high-level language for subsequent execution. An alternative is to realize behavior directly by executing the models using a specialized interpreter. One category of interpreted domain-specific modeling languages (DSMLs) derives behavior from changes to models at runtime. These are termed interpreted DSMLs or simply i-DSMLs. Existing interpreters for i-DSMLs exhibit tight coupling between the implicit model of execution (MoE) and the semantics of the domain. The interweaving of these two concerns compounds the challenge of developing interpreters for new i-DSMLs without a significant investment in resources. This paper introduces a generalized approach to developing i-DSML interpreters by utilizing a generic framework that is loosely coupled to the domain-specific knowledge as swappable framework extensions. We present a prototype as validation of our approach implemented using a metamodel based architecture to instantiate the interpreter for two distinct cyber-physical domains. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).