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Abstract : |
Software application generators can eliminate many of the technical aspects of programming for most computer users. We have developed a uniform approach to the design of program generators, based upon a simple idea---provide a declarative specification language for each application domain and give it a computable, denotational semantics. To make this idea practical, however, requires a comprehensive system for transforming and translatiing expressions in the higher-order functional operators of the semantics formulation into a reasonably efficient implementation expressed in a first-order, imperative programming language. This paper describes the system we have built to accomplish this. The technique and the system have been applied to produce a generator for modules that validate and translate messages sent from a peripheral sensor to a central controller. The input to a generator is a specification of the data formats and data constraints that characterize a message. The output is an Ada package of six functions that perform message translation and validation., |
