Successful Domain-Specific Languages ? Which one do you use? [closed]

Answer 1

I don't know if you want to consider graphical DSLs as well. I'd include

• NORMA, a DSL for conceptual domain modeling, based on Object-Role Modeling notation (ORM2)
• Web Service Software Factory, which uses three DSLs to model web services

Both of the above were created using the DSL Toolkit.

Answer 2

EBNF is probably the most widely-used domain specific language within its domain - a language to describe languages.

Answer 3

A DSL that's so succesful that it got its own SO tag is the regex language. Specific to the domain of string pattern matching, of course.

Another popular one, but with which I have no experience is VHDL. VHDLs popularity stems from the fact that it's easily converted for use in an FPGA.

[edit] While it's certainly not Turing complete, C's printf() format specifier can be considered as another domain-specific language.

Answer 4

There are parts of ruby on rails that can be considered domain-specific languages. In particular its language for specifying relational tables.

Answer 5

Tcl is a language that was originally designed to be a framework for building DSLs — providing basic functionality like programmability and I/O while the domain-specific parts were created fresh for each application — and which grew up into a generic scripting language. One of the more widely known Tcl-based DSLs is Expect.

Answer 6

Here is a question I had asked about DSLs written in Ruby: Ruby DSL (Domain Specific Language) repositories, examples

Aside from Ruby DSLs, SQL is a fine example of a very popular DSL, as is AWK.