For many problem domains domain-specific languages (DSLs) offer users more appropriate notations and abstractions in which to model systems when compared with general purpose programming languages. These benefits can often be amplified if a visual notation is used instead of textual notations. In many problem domains visual notations are preferred by practitioners as they often are the most intuitive representation of a problem. However, the lack of supporting infrastructure for constructing, implementing, and maintaining visual languages in general and domain-specific visual languages (DSVLs) in particular has been an impediment to gaining wider acceptance. This paper describes techniques used in the Moses tool-suite for defining the syntax and semantics of DSVLs, which are very general, yet are built on a few very simple concepts and are therefore easy to apply.

In this paper UML statechart diagrams are used as an example of a generic approach to integrating a visual language in a heterogeneous modelling and simulation environment. A system represented in a visual language is syntactically defined as an attributed graph, with well-formedness rules specified by a set of first-order predicates over the abstract syntax of the graph. The language semantics are specified by an Abstract State Machine (ASM) parameterized with syntactically-correct attributed graphs. In this paper the key issues in the definition of UML statechart semantics are highlighted.

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