More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/

research-article

Comparing complexity of API designs: an exploratory experiment on DSL-based framework integration

Authors:

Stefan Sobernig,

Patrick Gaubatz,

Mark Strembeck,

Uwe ZdunAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 47, Issue 3

Pages 157 - 166

https://doi.org/10.1145/2189751.2047890

Published: 22 October 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Embedded, textual DSLs are often provided as an API wrapped around object-oriented application frameworks to ease framework integration. While literature presents claims that DSL-based application development is beneficial, empirical evidence for this is rare. We present the results of an experiment comparing the complexity of three different object-oriented framework APIs and an embedded, textual DSL. For this comparative experiment, we implemented the same, non-trivial application scenario using these four different APIs. Then, we performed an Object-Points (OP) analysis, yielding indicators for the API complexity specific to each API variant. The main observation for our experiment is that the embedded, textual DSL incurs the smallest API complexity. Although the results are exploratory, as well as limited to the given application scenario and a single embedded DSL, our findings can direct future empirical work. The experiment design is applicable for similar API design evaluations.

References

[1]

R. K. Bandi, V. K. Vaishnavi, and D. E. Turk. Predicting Maintenance Performance Using Object-Oriented Design Complexity Metrics. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 29: 77--87, 2003.

Digital Library

[2]

R. D. Banker, R. J. Kauffman, and R. Kumar. An Empirical Test of Object-Based Output Measurement Metrics in a Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) Environment. Journal of Management Information Systems, 8 (3): 127--150, 1992.

Digital Library

[3]

D. Batory, C. Johnson, B. MacDonald, and D. von Heeder. Achieving Extensibility through Product-Lines and Domain-Specific Languages: A Case Study. ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol., 11 (2): 191--214, 2002.

Digital Library

[4]

J. Bettin. Measuring the Potential of Domain-Specific Modelling Techniques. In Proceedings of the 2nd Domain-Specific Modelling Languages Workshop (OOPSLA), Seattle, Washington, USA, pages 39--44, 2002.

[5]

J. Capers. Applied Software Measurement: Global Analysis of Productivity and Quality. McGraw-Hill, 3rd edition, 2008.

[6]

S. Clarke and C. Becker. Using the Cognitive Dimensions Framework to evaluate the usability of a class library. In Proceedings of the 15h Workshop of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group (PPIG 2003), Keele, UK, pages 359--336, 2003.

[7]

M. Fowler. Domain Specific Languages. The Addison-Wesley Signature Series. Addison-Wesley Professional, 1st edition, 2010.

Digital Library

[8]

P. Gabriel, M. Goulão, and V. Amaral. Do Software Languages Engineers Evaluate their Languages? In Proceedings of the XIII Congreso Iberoamericano en "Software Engineering", 2010.

[9]

F. Hermans, M. Pinzger, and A. van Deursen. Domain-Specific Languages in Practice: A User Study on the Success Factors. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS 2009) Denver, CO, USA, October 4-9, 2009, volume 5795 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 423--437. Springer, 2009.

Digital Library

[10]

P. Klint, T. van der Storm, and J. Vinju. On the Impact of DSL Tools on the Maintainability of Language Implementations. In C. Brabrand and P.-E. Moreau, editors, Proceedings of Workshop on Language Descriptions, Tools and Applications 2010 (LDTA'10), pages 10:1--10:9. ACM, 2010.

Digital Library

[11]

T. Kosar, P. M. López, P. Barrientos, and M. Mernik. A preliminary study on various implementation approaches of domain-specific languages. Information and Software Technology, 50 (5): 390--405, 2008.

Digital Library

[12]

J. Merilinna and J. Pärssinen. Comparison Between Different Abstraction Level Programming: Experiment Definition and Initial Results. In Proceedings of the 7th OOPSLA Workshop on Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM'07), Montréal, Candada, number TR-38 in Technical Report, Finland, 2007. University of Jyväskylä.

[13]

M. Mernik, J. Heering, and A. Sloane. When and How to Develop Domain-Specific Languages. ACM Computing Surveys, 37 (4): 316--344, 2005.

Digital Library

[14]

MetaCase. Nokia Case Study. Industry experience report, MetaCase, 2007.

[15]

G. Neumann and U. Zdun. XOTcl, an Object-Oriented Scripting Language. In Proceedings of Tcl2k: The 7th USENIX Tcl/Tk Conference, Austin, Texas, USA, 2000.

Digital Library

[16]

OASIS. Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) V2.0 Technical Overview. http://docs.oasis-open.org/security/saml/Post2.0/sstc-saml-tech-overview-2.0-cd-02.pdf, 2008.

[17]

H. M. Sneed. Estimating the costs of software maintenance tasks. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM'95), Opio (Nice), France, October 17-20, 1995, pages 168--181. IEEE Computer Society, 1995.

Digital Library

[18]

M. Strembeck and U. Zdun. An Approach for the Systematic Development of Domain-Specific Languages. Software: Practice and Experience, 39 (15): 1253--1292, 2009.

Digital Library

[19]

J. Stylos and B. A. Myers. Mapping the Space of API Design Decisions. In 2007 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC 2007), 23-27 September 2007, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, USA, pages 50--60. IEEE Computer Society, 2007.

Digital Library

[20]

A. van Deursen and P. Klint. Little languages: Little Maintenance? Journal of Software Maintenance, 10 (2): 75--92, 1998.

Digital Library

[21]

D. A. Wheeler. SLOCCount. http://www.dwheeler.com/sloccount/, last accessed: October 14, 2008.

[22]

D. Wile. Lessons learned from real DSL experiments. Science of Computer Programming, 51 (3): 265--290, 2004.

Digital Library

[23]

J. Wüst. SDMetrics. http://sdmetrics.com/, last accessed: May 27, 2011, 2011.

[24]

J. Zeng, C. Mitchell, and S. A. Edwards. A Domain-Specific Language for Generating Dataflow Analyzers. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 164 (2): 103--119, 2006.

Cited By

Artho CSeidl MGros QChoi EKitamura TMori ARamler RYamagata YCohen MGrunske LWhalen M(2015)Model-based testing of stateful APIs with modbatProceedings of the 30th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1109/ASE.2015.95(858-863)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ASE.2015.95
Alatalo TKuusela EPuuperä ROjala TCooper KScacchi WWang A(2013)Comparative API complexity analysis of two platforms for networked multiplayer games using a reference gameProceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering: Engineering Computer Games to Enable Positive, Progressive Change10.5555/2662593.2662602(44-50)Online publication date: 18-May-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2662593.2662602
Sobernig SSobernig S(2020)DSL as Variable SoftwareVariable Domain-specific Software Languages with DjDSL10.1007/978-3-030-42152-6_1(1-31)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42152-6_1
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Comparing complexity of API designs: an exploratory experiment on DSL-based framework integration
1. Software and its engineering

Recommendations

Comparing complexity of API designs: an exploratory experiment on DSL-based framework integration
GPCE '11: Proceedings of the 10th ACM international conference on Generative programming and component engineering

Embedded, textual DSLs are often provided as an API wrapped around object-oriented application frameworks to ease framework integration. While literature presents claims that DSL-based application development is beneficial, empirical evidence for this ...
Tool support for crosscutting concerns of API documentation
AOSD '10: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development

Writing detailed API (Application Programming Interface) documentation is a significant task for developing a good class library or framework. However, existing documentation tools such as Javadoc provide only limited support and thus the description ...
Location API 2.0 for J2ME - A new standard in location for Java-enabled mobile phones

Key aspects in realizing the maximum potential of advanced Location-Based Services (LBS) are the standardization and cross-platform availability of an Application Programming Interface (API) for mobile phones that allows access to real-time location ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 47, Issue 3

GCPE '11

March 2012

179 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/2189751

Issue’s Table of Contents

GPCE '11: Proceedings of the 10th ACM international conference on Generative programming and component engineering
October 2011
194 pages
ISBN:9781450306898
DOI:10.1145/2047862
General Chair:
Ewen Denney
SGT/NASA Ames, USA
,
Program Chair:
Ulrik Pagh Schultz
University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 22 October 2011

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 47, Issue 3

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

8
Total Citations
View Citations
287
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)15
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

Reflects downloads up to 14 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Artho CSeidl MGros QChoi EKitamura TMori ARamler RYamagata YCohen MGrunske LWhalen M(2015)Model-based testing of stateful APIs with modbatProceedings of the 30th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1109/ASE.2015.95(858-863)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ASE.2015.95
Alatalo TKuusela EPuuperä ROjala TCooper KScacchi WWang A(2013)Comparative API complexity analysis of two platforms for networked multiplayer games using a reference gameProceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering: Engineering Computer Games to Enable Positive, Progressive Change10.5555/2662593.2662602(44-50)Online publication date: 18-May-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2662593.2662602
Sobernig SSobernig S(2020)DSL as Variable SoftwareVariable Domain-specific Software Languages with DjDSL10.1007/978-3-030-42152-6_1(1-31)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42152-6_1
Artho CSeidl MGros QChoi EKitamura TMori ARamler RYamagata YCohen MGrunske LWhalen M(2015)Model-based testing of stateful APIs with modbatProceedings of the 30th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1109/ASE.2015.95(858-863)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ASE.2015.95
Ewald RUhrmacher A(2014)SESSLACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation10.1145/256789524:2(1-25)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2567895
Bezerra DBarreto R(2014)Domain EngineeringProceedings of the 2014 Eighth Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures and Reuse10.1109/SBCARS.2014.20(53-63)Online publication date: 29-Sep-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/SBCARS.2014.20
Alatalo TKuusela EPuupera ROjala T(2013)Comparative API complexity analysis of two platforms for networked multiplayer games using a reference game2013 3rd International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering: Engineering Computer Games to Enable Positive, Progressive Change (GAS)10.1109/GAS.2013.6632590(44-50)Online publication date: May-2013
https://doi.org/10.1109/GAS.2013.6632590
Sobernig SStrembeck MBeck A(2013)Developing a Domain-Specific Language for Scheduling in the European Energy SectorSoftware Language Engineering10.1007/978-3-319-02654-1_2(19-35)Online publication date: 2013
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02654-1_2

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents