The Role of DSLs in Architecture Design

Many projects require a high degree of configurability by its users. While this can include setting mere configuration options, application domains may also use complex, user-defined rules, flows or entities. In such cases, devising a custom configuration language helps manage complexity. The resulting language is a domain-specific language (or DSL for short). Well-designed DSLs

– contribute to separation of concerns by decoupling configuration from implementation,
– improve usability of the software by providing a consistent view of the domain rules, and
– lay the foundations for some architectural quality goals, such as configurability and malleability.

In this talk, we explain what roles DSLs can play in architecture design, and give an overview of the methods and tools that are available for designing and implementing them.