Software Distribution DSL

• Software vendors need to build several bundles for different types of customers All these bundles are typically assembled from the same pool of components
  • Different bundles contain different subsets of these components
• Components have dependencies between them
  • e.g. if component C2 depends on component C1, then bundles that contain C2 must always also contain C1

Exercise

• Create a DSL for designing such bundles
• Create a model that conforms to the DSL and exercises all its features at least once

Example

• You are a vendor of an Enterprise Resource Planning system implemented in Java that consists of several components
  • e.g. Sales, Warehouse, Payroll
• Each component consists of a number of JAR files
  • Components can share JARs
• The dependencies between your components are as shown below
• You wish to assemble different bundles for e.g.
  • Sole Traders: Core, Sales, CRM
  • Service Companies: Core, Payroll, CRM
  • Manufacturing Companies: All components excluding Real-Time Warehouse Analytics
  • Large Manufacturing Companies: All components

Why?

• You could write a packaging (e.g. shell, ANT, Gradle) script for each distribution manually however
  • It would be error-prone
  • They would contain a lot of duplication
  • They would be hard to maintain for a large set of components
• Using a domain-specific model
  • You can capture bundle configurations at an appropriate level of abstraction
  • You can perform checks for e.g.
    • components with cyclic dependencies
    • components/JARs that are not used in any products (obsolete?)
• You can generate these packaging scripts automatically and they will be correct by construction

Solution

Try to design your own metamodel before you check out the solution below (part of the solution ZIP).

@namespace(uri="sdl", prefix="")
package sdl;

class Vendor {
	attr String name;
	val Bundle[*] bundles;
	val Component[*] components;
	val Jar[*] jars;
}

class Bundle {
	attr String name;
	ref Component[*] components;
}

class Component {
	attr String name;
	ref Component[*] dependencies;
	ref Jar[*] jars;
}

class Jar {
	attr String filename;
}