Graphic DSL for Mobile Development

Abstract

Due to the increase in the number of platforms, languages and methods which are used in mobile development, the general technology elaboration problem is quite relevant nowadays. Graphic languages simplify software development, allowing to present program structure in terms of visual diagrams. Besides, graphic languages allow software engineers to avoid a lot of mistakes at the initial stages of design and development. Graphic domain-specific languages (DSL) facilitate application development by use of concrete domain abstractions. In this approach the mobile application structure will be presented in the form of various controllers connected among themselves through ports and corresponding to some complete fragments of logic. Controllers in turn consist of various states which allow to describe a data flow in the controller using various element connections. In each state the UI form which contains the graphic primitives and events connected with primitives can be described. Besides, code generator for UbiqMobile platform is implemented which will allow to generate UbiqMobile applications by the visual diagrams. At the end of the article demonstration examples on which the implemented DSL language was tested are given. The application allowing the user to get the trains schedule is provided in the first example. In the second application the user can log in to receive a check-in code.