Domain-specific languages (DSLs) are languages tailored to a specific application domain. They offer substantial gains in expressiveness and ease of use compared with general-purpose programming languages in their domain of application. DSL development is hard, requiring both domain knowledge and language development expertise. Few people have both. Not surprisingly, the decision to develop a DSL is often postponed indefinitely, if considered at all, and most DSLs never get beyond the application library stage.Although many articles have been written on the development of particular DSLs, there is very limited literature on DSL development methodologies and many questions remain regarding when and how to develop a DSL. To aid the DSL developer, we identify patterns in the decision, analysis, design, and implementation phases of DSL development. Our patterns improve and extend earlier work on DSL design patterns. We also discuss domain analysis tools and language development systems that may help to speed up DSL development. Finally, we present a number of open problems.

/pdf/when-and-how-to-develop-domain-specific-languages-29nvxv3ngp.pdf

When and how to develop domain-specific languages

http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~horrocks/Publications/download/2003/HoPH03a.pdf

From SHIQ and RDF to OWL: the making of a Web Ontology Language

The potential to achieve dynamic, scalable and cost-effective marketplaces and eCommerce solutions has driven recent research efforts towards so-called Semantic Web Services that are enriching Web services with machine-processable semantics. To this end, the Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO) provides the conceptual underpinning and a formal language for semantically describing all relevant aspects of Web services in order to facilitate the automatization of discovering, combining and invoking electronic services over the Web.

In this paper we describe the overall structure of WSMO by its four main elements: ontologies, which provide the terminology used by other WSMO elements, Web services, which provide access to services that, in turn, provide some value in some domain, goals that represent user desires, and mediators, which deal with interoperability problems between different WSMO elements. Along with introducing the main elements of WSMO, we provide a logical language for defining formal statements in WSMO together with some motivating examples from practical use cases which shall demonstrate the benefits of Semantic Web Services.

/pdf/web-service-modeling-ontology-2at408gd3c.pdf

Web Service Modeling Ontology

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is the standard knowledge representation language for the Semantic Web, an evolution of the World Wide Web that aims to provide a well-founded infrastructure for publishing, sharing and querying structured data. This article provides an introduction to RDF and its related vocabulary definition language RDF Schema, and explains its relationship with the OWL Web Ontology Language. Finally, it provides an overview of the historical development of RDF and related languages for Web metadata.

Resource Description Framework (RDF)

Here we propose an OWL encoded context ontology (CONON) for modeling context in pervasive computing environments, and for supporting logic-based context reasoning. CONON provides an upper context ontology that captures general concepts about basic context, and also provides extensibility for adding domain-specific ontology in a hierarchical manner. Based on this context ontology, we have studied the use of logic reasoning to check the consistency of context information, and to reason over low-level, explicit context to derive high-level, implicit context. By giving a performance study for our prototype, we quantitatively evaluate the feasibility of logic based context reasoning for nontime-critical applications in pervasive computing environments, where we always have to deal carefully with the limitation of computational resources.

/pdf/ontology-based-context-modeling-and-reasoning-using-owl-3jv6272hrg.pdf

Ontology based context modeling and reasoning using OWL

The {W}eb {O}ntology {L}anguage {OWL} is a semantic markup language for publishing and sharing ontologies on the {W}orld {W}ide {W}eb. {OWL} is developed as a vocabulary extension of {RDF} (the {R}esource {D}escription {F}ramework) and is derived from the {DAML}+{OIL} {W}eb {O}ntology {L}anguage. {T}his document contains a structured informal description of the full set of {OWL} language constructs and is meant to serve as a reference for {OWL} users who want to construct {OWL} ontologies.

S. Bechofer

Papers

OWL Web Ontology Language - Reference