SemServGen: Advancing Industrial Domain-Specific Language Engineering through Semantic Service Generation

Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) are widely used across industries for addressing challenges within specific domains. However, designing a DSL is just the first step in DSL engineering. To truly enhance development efficiency and system quality, comprehensive syntax and semantic services are essential. Currently, semantic services are primarily implemented manually, leading to high development costs. Automating their generation can significantly improve efficiency and reduce costs in DSL projects. This paper presents SemServGen, a framework that defines a structured approach to DSL semantic service development. SemServGen comprises SemaDSL, a unified semantic service expression language; SemServ-editor, which provides editing, syntax, semantic, template, and DSL-binding services; and SemServ-gen, an automated semantic service generator. SemaDSL enables the specification of both generic and domain-specific semantic services, while SemServ-gen translates these formal specifications into executable semantic services. We evaluated SemServGen with industry partners using CRL and SemaDSL as target DSLs. The results demonstrate that SemaDSL effectively models semantic service domain concepts with high usability, while SemServGen increases development efficiency by 2.5 times for CRL and 1.9 times for SemaDSL compared to manual implementation. Additionally, the generated semantic services meet industry-standard performance benchmarks for service analysis time.