Supporting Domain-Specific Programming in Web 2.0: A Case Study of Smart Devices

Web 2.0 communities emerge regularly with the growing need for domain-specific programming over Web APIs. Even though Web mashups provide access to Web APIs, they ignore domain-specific programming needs. On the other hand, developing domain-specific languages (DSLs) is costly and not feasible for such ad hoc communities. We propose User Language Domain (ULD): an intermediate Web-based architecture using a domain-specific embedded languages approach that reduces the cost of DSL development to plugging the Web APIs into a host end user programming language. We have implemented the proposed architecture in the context of smart devices, where we plug the functionality of different Lego Mindstorms devices into a Web-based visual programming language. We expect that several domains, such as smart homes or wearable computers can use the ULD architecture to reduce development effort.