Project

We have tentatively concluded that electronic transaction processing over an electronic mail connection is a domain that could be profitably supported by a domain-specific language, and that designing and implementing such a language may be a sufficiently small task for the Fall 2000 CIS 510/410 class to take on as an exercise or project.

[Here] are Kevin's instructions to students in the database class.

Assignment: Case Studies

Due Tuesday, 14 November: Two examples worked out in your language, with enough commentary to understand what is going on. Please minimize hand-waving --- it's time to start nailing down the syntax and semantics of your language design. The two case studies are:

• Database homework processing, following Kevin's description as far as possible. You will need to deviate from the functionality of Kevin's Perl script in a few places (e.g., you may choose to require a different format in the email message); please document these deviations.
• Review data for the International Conference on Software Engineering (see my working notes for the content of this.)

In addition, it would be useful to see the "hello world" of your scripting language, i.e., the shortest transaction processing script that does something.

Assignment: Language Reference Manual

I'm shooting for Tuesday, 21 November. This would be a complete reference to the syntax of your language, with a reasonably complete explanation of semantics. I strongly recommend testing your grammar with a parser generator. (For XML, the equivalent would be writing and checking the DTD.)

Working Notes

[Here] are my working notes, including my strawman design (out of date and incomplete) and the ICSE review form example.