A novel approach using alloy in Domain-Specific Language engineering

Modeling and building software systems for a given specific domain is a complex task. Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) have been increasingly gaining attention because they are developed to cope with particularities of specific domains. However, DSL development consists in a set of tasks to be performed and some can be error-prone. Identifying the correct set of elements within a DSL and their constraints can be very demanding. Alloy is a popular lightweight intuitive formal language with a simple notation that is easy to read and write. When models of a DSL are specified using Alloy, it becomes possible to generate instances that should represent valid models. So, this paper presents a generic innovative methodology using Alloy in DSL engineering, in order to find and tune language constraints in a systematic way. It also presents an empirical study illustrating the applicability of the proposed methodology.