What is a domain specific language? Anybody using it? And in what way?

terminology dsl
Srikar Doddi picture Srikar Doddi · May 1, 2009 · Viewed 77.6k times · Source

I guess I am looking for some kind of intro and see if anybody have used it. Are there any particular advantages of using it?

Wikipedia:

domain-specific language (DSL) is a programming language or specification language dedicated to a particular problem domain, a particular problem representation technique, and/or a particular solution technique.

Can anybody give any specific examples of how you have implemented it or how it can be useful in a given scenario?

Answer

Charlie Martin picture Charlie Martin · May 1, 2009

A domain specific language is a language that's written to deal with a specific domain or set of concerns. There are a lot of them around, like make, ant, and rake for describing software builds, or lexx and yacc for language construction. In recent years, they've become popular as some things have combined to make them easier to build. Big among those things has been the increasing popularity of Ruby, which has several features that make it easy to build new DSLs.

Martin Fowler is a big proponent of the idea, as here.

Related questions

What do < and > stand for?

I know that the entities &lt; and &gt; are used for < and >, but I am curious what these names stand for. Does &lt; stand for something like "Left tag" or is it just a code?

Read More
What is reflection and why is it useful?

What is reflection, and why is it useful? I'm particularly interested in Java, but I assume the principles are the same in any language.

Read More
What is dependency injection?

There have been several questions already posted with specific questions about dependency injection, such as when to use it and what frameworks are there for it. However, What is dependency injection and when/why should or shouldn't it be used?

Read More