Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs)--languages geared to specific vertical or horizontal areas of interest--are attracting growing excitement from software engineers and architects. DSLs bring new agility to the creation and evolution of system requirements and simplify their translation into code, significantly reducing development costs in large-scale projects. In this breakthrough book, four leading experts reveal exactly how DSLs work, and how you can make the most of them in your environment. You'll begin by mastering DSL concepts and techniques that apply to all platforms. Next, discover how to create and use DSLs with the powerful new Microsoft DSL Tools--a toolset designed by this book's authors. Learn how the Microsoft DSL Tools integrate into Visual Studio 2005--and how to define DSLs and generate Visual Designers using Visual Studio's built-in modeling technology. In-depth coverage includes Determining whether DSLs will work for you Comparing DSLs with other approaches to model-driven development Defining, tuning, and evolving DSLs: models, presentation, creation, updates, serialization, constraints, validation, and more Creating Visual Designers for new DSLs with little or no coding Multiplying productivity by generating application code from your models with easy-to-use text templates Automatically generating configuration files, resources, and other artifacts Deploying Visual Designers across the organization, quickly and easily Customizing Visual Designers for specialized process needs The book's companion Web site (www.domainspecificdevelopment.com) includes code samples, plus additional resources and information.

Steve Cook is a software architect in the Enterprise Frameworks and Tools group at Microsoft Gareth Jones, DSL Tools Lead Developer, has been at Microsoft since 1997 Stuart Kent joined Microsoft in 2003 as a program manager to work on the DSL Tools Alan Cameron Wills was a methodology consultant for nearly a decade before joining Microsoft in 2003

This book is a software developer's guide to using the Microsoft Tools for Domain-Specific Languages ("DSL Tools"), which are included in the SDK (Software Development Kit) for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.The software industry is showing considerable interest in using "domain-specific languages," an approach to building software that promises to reduce software development costs, especially in large projects. A domain-specific language (DSL) is a language specially geared to working within a particular area of interest: a vertical domain such as telephone design, or a horizontal one like workflow. It may be a programming language or a specification or design language. It may be textual or graphical, or a mixture of both. The language is expressed in terms that are used in a particular domain, such as "connect," "ringtone," or "work item," uncluttered by the details of how those concepts are implemented. Software, configuration files, resources, and other documents can be generated from instances of the language--often many of those artifacts can be generated from one DSL--or the language may be interpreted directly. This makes it much easier to discuss the software at the requirements level, and to make changes in an agile way. In vertical domains, the accessibility of the language to business users helps when discussing requirements with them.DSLs are not a new idea--HTML and SQL are well-known examples of DSLs. Less widespread, however, is the idea of creating your own DSL for your own project. The purpose of the Microsoft DSL Tools is to reduce the upfront cost of doing so. You can quickly create a range of diagrammatic languages, such as workflow, class, or entity diagrams, and you can create tools for generating artifacts from them. Goals and ScopeThis book is for you if you are a software developer or architect using, or thinking about using, the Microsoft DSL Tools. It explains how to create and use languages, how to tune them to your needs, and how to employ them within the context of your project. The book should also be of significant value to readers who are interested in the broader general topic of domain-specific languages, or who wish to compare and contrast different approaches to model-driven development, or tools that support model-driven development. Chapters 1 and 11 discuss the more general topic of domain-specific languages, and how you go about designing one. The middle chapters focus exclusively on providing a detailed yet readable reference on building DSLs and code generators using the DSL Tools.The book's authors are the main designers of the Microsoft DSL Tools. They have worked together on the product since its inception, and are responsible for most of the key design decisions. Why You Might Want to Use DSL ToolsIf you (or your organization) are writing the same or similar code repeatedly, whether within a single large project or over the course of multiple projects, then such code can probably be generated. If this is the case, you should consider using the DSL Tools as a way to generate this code. This is especially the case if the code can be generated from structures that can easily be understood by domain specialists rather than software development specialists. After reading this book, you should be able to assess the capabilities of the DSL Tools to address problems of this kind, either directly or after some customization. Organization of This BookChapter 1, Domain-Specific Development, explains the DSL approach, compares it with similar techniques, and introduces typical scenarios in which a DSL is used.Chapter 2, Creating and Using DSLs, looks at the various parts of the DSL Tools system, shows how they fit together, and introduces the main examples that will be used through the remainder of the book.Chapter 3, Domain Model Definition, details how to define the concepts of the language.Chapter 4, P