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Published Articles >> Table of Contents >> Abstract
10th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC'03)
p. 186
Rigorous EBNF-based Definition for a Graphic Modeling Language
Yong Xia, Institut für Informatik der Universität Zürich, Switzerland
Martin Glinz, Institut für Informatik der Universität Zürich, Switzerland
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DOI Bookmark: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/APSEC.2003.1254371
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| Abstract |
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Today, the syntax of visual specification languages such
as UML is typically defined using meta-modelling techniques.
However, this kind of syntax definition has drawbacks.
In particular, graphic meta-models are not powerful
enough, so they must be augmented by a textual constraint
language.
As an alternative, we present in this paper, a text-based
technique for the syntax definition of a graphic specification
language. We exploit the fact that in a graphic specification
language, most syntactic features are independent of
the layout of the graph. So we map the graphic elements to
textual ones and define the context-free syntax of this textual
language in EBNF. Using our mapping, this grammar also
defines the syntax of the graphic language. Simple spatial
and context-sensitive constraints are then added by attributing
the context-free grammar. Finally, for handling complex
structural and dynamic information in the syntax, we give a
set of operational rules that work on the attributed EBNF.
We explain our syntax definition technique by applying
it to the modelling language ADORA which is being developed
in our research group. We also briefly discuss the application
of our technique to the syntax definition of UML.
At last we mention the advantages of our method over
the metamodeling techniques.
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 Additional Information
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Citation:
Yong Xia, Martin Glinz,
"Rigorous EBNF-based Definition for a Graphic Modeling Language,"
apsec,
p. 186,
10th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC'03),
2003
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