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Vol: 51(65) No: 4 / December 2006 

Creating Concrete Syntax Visually for Domain Specific Languages
Gergely Mezei
Department of Automation and Applied Informatics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Goldmann Gyorgy ter 3., 1111 Budapest, Hungary, phone: (36) 1- 463-1662, e-mail: gmezei@aut.bme.hu
Tihamer Levendovszky
Department of Automation and Applied Informatics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Goldmann Gyorgy ter 3., 1111 Budapest, Hungary, e-mail: tihamer@aut.bme.hu
Hassan Charaf
Department of Automation and Applied Informatics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Goldmann Gyorgy ter 3., 1111 Budapest, Hungary, e-mail: hassan@aut.bme.hu


Keywords: metamodeling, concrete syntax, Domain Specific Language, model transformation.

Abstract
Metamodeling techniques allow creating structural definition for domain-specific languages (DSLs), but the presentation (the concrete syntax) cannot follow this flexibility. The main concern of this paper is to present an overview of a generic and flexible solution to create and maintain presentation for DSLs: Firstly, a domain-specific language is presented, which can specify the presentation of arbitrary DSLs and the standard UML models. Graphical visualization and editing solutions are also discussed. Secondly, a method is elaborated using model transformation, which can be used to transform concrete syntax definitions automatically into source code. An overview of the model transformation, proofs for its termination and a simple case study is also presented.

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