Active Domain-Specific Languages: Making Every Mobile User a Modeller

Domain-specific languages (DSLs) are small languages tailored to a certain application area, like logistics, web application testing or smart city planning. Traditionally, the use of DSLs has been limited to a static setting in desktop or web editors. However, in this paper, we claim that DSLs can be central components of mobile collaborative applications. In our vision, graphical DSLs can be extended to make use of mobility and context, and integrate heterogeneous information gathered from open APIs. We call this new generation languages "active DSLs".We foresee a range of scenarios where active DSLs can be useful. On the one hand, they can be used more flexibly in remote locations by enabling local collaboration of several mobile devices using their short-range communication capabilities. On the other hand, they can be extended with contextual features like geolocation, allowing the integration of maps and geo-services within the DSL, or the DSL rendering customization in response to contextual information. Active DSLs can also retrieve information from open APIs, in which case, models defined with the DSL become aggregators of heterogeneous data.In this paper, we explain our vision for active DSLs and the first steps towards its realization in the DSL-comet tool. The tool permits creating and using mobile graphical DSLs on iOS devices, and their seamless use in desktop environments.