Source code generator based on a proprietary specification language

Abstract

An application generator has resulted from the authors' efforts to improve the development of interactive database applications. The developed tool is based on a meta-base. The meta-base comprises an extended data model, the programming language description and some additional information to support the generation process. The procedures described in a proprietary specification language serve to generate the application over the database modeled in the meta-base. The specification language is based on the source code templates, standard program structures and on special statements for handling of the meta-data. Main ideas and operating principles of the original application generator are exposed. The specification language, its syntax and its basic components are described. The generator functionality is explained on some simple specification examples where the SQL code and pseudo-code for the corresponding hypothetical application are generated. Some experience gathered from the generator practical usage is discussed. A list of projects is included, where some complex applications were developed by the aid of the generator. An analysis is presented to show the proportions of the generated source code versus manually written statements.

Development of a Database for the Common Information Model of Power Grids

“…In [1], Ablonskis and Nemuraitė detect modelto-code transformations, which can later be reused for composing templates for generating a program code. The authors in [3], [12] and [2] start from a database model and templates to generate different layers of their applications. In addition, in [22], templates are used to transform model and generate Softwareas-a-Service applications.…”

Automatic source code generation of peripheral hardware modules firmware

“…It is a widely known, for example, if we use UML [5], as a language for modeling, then it is necessary to graphically model the problem, and the source code generation will be done by the tools made for that purpose. For this reason it is not possible to customize these tools in order to achieve the flexibility, and a large group of specific problems, which include the problem described in this paper, remains unresolved.…”

Thorn Language: A Flexible Tool for Code Generation

“…Another example is production of parsers from grammars [9]. There are many code generators, which produce specific software from UML diagrams or other description of data [7]. Code generator tools cover areas that are less common than database handling or widgets layout.…”