DMLAS: A Domain-Specific Language for designing adaptive systems

An adaptive system is able to modify its behavior at runtime due to changes in the system, in the requirements, or in the environment in which it is deployed. The importance of adaptive software lies in the fact that it may adjust its own behavior to different environments and contexts, and thus, give to the users a better experience. However, the development of adaptive systems is not a simple task. There are two main drawbacks. First, there is a lack of languages to specify, unambiguously, the elements related to the design phase. As a consequence, these systems are often developed in an ad-hoc manner, without the required formalism, difficulting the process of derivation of design models to the next phases of the development cycle. Second, design decisions and the adaptation model tend to be directly implemented into the code and not thoroughly specified at the design level. Since the adaptation models become tangled with the code, system evolution becomes more difficult. To address the above issues, this article proposes DMLAS, a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) for designing adaptive systems. As proof of concept, this article also provides a functional prototype based on the Generic Modeling Environment (GME).