Meta-packages: painless domain specific languages.

Domain Specific Languages are
used to provide a tailored modelling notation
for a specific application domain. There are
currently two main approaches to DSLs: standard notations that are tailored by adding
simple properties; new notations that are
designed from scratch. There are problems
with both of these approaches which can
be addressed by providing access to a small
meta-language based on packages and classes.
A meta-modelling approach based on meta-packages allows a wide range of DSLs to be defined in a standard way. The DSLs can be processed using standard object-based extension at the meta-level and existing tooling can easily be defined to adapt to the new languages. This paper introduces the concept of meta-packages
and provides a simple example.