Using DSLs to manage consistency in long-lived enterprise language specifications

Abstract Modern enterprise systems are likely to have a very long life. Their specifications therefore need to employ mechanisms that allow them to evolve during their lifetime; where they exploit generic components, these must be adaptable for use in novel situations. The paper looks at some of the issues that arise from this requirement, and how the exploitation of domain-specific language technologies in the tool-chain can assist in maintaining consistency of the specification as a whole. First, it reviews the final state of the family of standards supporting the ODP Enterprise Language, which is intended to handle this kind of application. In particular, it looks at the way the framework for defining policies can be used to accommodate changing requirements during the lifetime of an evolving system. It also looks at the way the idea of deontic tokens enables factoring out of the management of obligations from the basic behaviour of interacting system components. It then proposes a roadmap for building tools that can be used to unify the constraints from different areas of concern into a single specification. The approach taken is to exploit the power of domain-specific languages (DSLs) to allow designers in the various areas of concern to provide their input in terms natural to them. Finally, it looks at the way this approach promotes the establishment of a robust tool-chain capable of handling the evolution and scalability of enterprise systems. The paper uses a running example from the e-health domain to show how specific areas identified in the e-health standards can lead to language definitions, and so to tooling, that can be used to manage unified, system-wide specifications.