Domain Specific Languages

Afp0607

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---+ Task Description

All students have to further investigate one domain specific language: the available topics are listed below, and these will
be assigned in the first week. For each topic, a number of starting points (web sites, papers, etc.) are given. Given these
starting points, try to find 
as much relevant information as possible about your assigned topic. The task consists of two parts:

   * One 30 minute presentation (in English). You are encouraged to download existing software, to experiment with it, and to show
     us a (small) demo.
   * A review report (about 2 pages). This report should contain at least the following ingredients.
      * a summary
      * the additional gain of embedding your assigned DSL in a functional language like Haskell.
      * your opinion about and experiences with the combinator library.

For this assignment, students may work in pairs. The assignment may also be completed individually, as long as there are enough topics available.

---++ Feedback Forms

All attendees are asked to submit their opinions: please fill in the feedback forms to be found below. Because these forms
will be processed automatically, you are asked to follow the subsequent instructions:

   * Don't edit the lines starting with a =>=: the positions where you are supposed to enter text are marked with parentheses.
   * Fill in your name (referee).
   * For each presentation, supply a mark (between 1 and 10, decimals allowed). You are encouraged to vary your marks. Your grade
     will contribute to the overall grade.
   * For each presentation, provide some positive remarks (what did you like) and some constructive advice (what could be 
     improved). These comments will be sent to your fellow students so don't be insulting or disrespectful. At the same time,
     constructive advice will be appreciated and will help to improve future presentations. A remark can be put on multiple lines. 
   * The feedback may be written in Dutch, unless a foreign student is involved. In this case, feedback in English is mandatory.
   * You don't have to provide feedback on your own presentation: you may leave that part unchanged. 
   * Download the feedback form, insert your comments, and send it to me _as a text file_ by email.

Please consult me in case the instructions above are not clear enough.

The feedback forms:
   * [[%ATTACHURL%/feedback-form1.txt][feedback-form1.txt]]
   * [[%ATTACHURL%/feedback-form2.txt][feedback-form2.txt]]
   * [[%ATTACHURL%/feedback-form3.txt][feedback-form3.txt]]

---++ Assigned Topics

---+++ March 7 (Wednesday)

| *Time*       | *Speaker*           | *Topic* | *Slides and Material* | 
|10:10 - 10:50 | Robert/Peter        | Haskore (Computer Music) | [[%ATTACHURL%/Haskore.ppt][Haskore.ppt]] |
|10:50 - 11:30 | Jeroen L/Maaike     | Pretty Printing | [[%ATTACHURL%/presentatie.pdf][presentatie.pdf]] |
|11:40 - 12:20 | Guangyu             | Pan#/Pancito | [[%ATTACHURL%/Pan.pdf][Pan.pdf]] + [[%ATTACHURL%/Material_DSL_PAN.zip][zip]] |
|12:20 - 13:00 | Mark/Alesya         | Fran | [[%ATTACHURL%/Fran.ppt][Fran.ppt]] + [[%ATTACHURL%/Fran.zip][Fran.zip]] |

---+++ March 21 (Wednesday)

| *Time*       | *Speaker*           | *Topic* | *Slides and Material* | 
|10:10 - 10:50 | Niek/Matthijs       | Haskell Server Pages | [[%ATTACHURL%/HaskellServerPages.pdf][Slides]] + [[%ATTACHURL%/HSPexamples.zip][Examples]] |
|10:50 - 11:30 | Joost/Jeiel         | XML Tools | [[%ATTACHURL%/DSLpresentation.ppt][Slides]] |
|11:40 - 12:20 | Tim S/Tim B         | HTML Generation (WASH) | [[%ATTACHURL%/AFPDSLpresentation.pdf][Slides]]|
|12:20 - 13:00 | Martin/Xavier       | WASH/CGI | [[%ATTACHURL%/WASH_CGI.pdf][WASH_CGI.pdf]] + [[%ATTACHURL%/wash_cgi.tar.gz][zip]] |

---+++ March 28 (Wednesday)

| *Time*       | *Speaker*           | *Topic* | *Slides and Material* |
| 10:10 - 10:50 | Eelco/Niels        | Haskell DB | [[%ATTACHURL%/haskelldb_handout.pdf][slides]] + [[%ATTACHURL%/haskelldb_examples.zip][examples]]| 
| 10:50 - 11:30 | Jeroen G/Martijn   | Functional Meta Post | [[%ATTACHURL%/FMP.pdf][slides]] |
| 11:40 - 12:20 | Bas/Reinier        | Tangible Values | [[%ATTACHURL%/tv-slides.pdf][tv-slides.pdf]] | 
| 12:20 - 13:00 | Brian/Erik         | Yampa/Functional Robotics | [[%ATTACHURL%/Yampa.pdf][Yampa.pdf]] |


---+++ March 29 (Thursday)

Note that this presentation will take place at the regular
[[http://www.cs.uu.nl/wiki/Stc/WebHome][Software Technology Colloquium]].

| *Time*        | *Speaker*           | *Topic* | *Slides and Material* | 
| 11:45 - 12:45 | Remi/Bastiaan       | Genuinely Functional User Interfaces | [[%ATTACHURL%/fruit.pdf][fruit.pdf]] |

---+ Topics

---++ 1. XML Tools

A number of Haskell libraries exist for processing XML. These libraries typically offer facilities such as parsing, filtering, transforming, validating, and generating XML documents. Two well-known combinator libraries for processing XML are HaXML and The Haskell XML Toolbox.

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:*
   * http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/HaXml/
   * http://www.fh-wedel.de/~si/HXmlToolbox/

---++ 2. Computer Music
(_from the Haskore Computer Music System homepage_)

Haskore is a collection of Haskell modules designed for expressing musical structures in the high-level, declarative style of functional programming. In Haskore, musical objects consist of primitive notions such as notes and rests, operations to transform musical objects such as transpose and tempo-scaling, and operations to combine musical objects to form more complex ones, such as concurrent and sequential composition. From these simple roots, much richer musical ideas can easily be developed.

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:*
   * http://haskell.org/haskore/

---++ 3. Diagram Editor Blobs
(_from the Blobs homepage_)

Blobs is a front-end for drawing and editing graph diagrams. You must add your own back-end engine if you want it to do some analysis or processing of the graph. There are various analysis engines that use Blobs as a front-end, e.g. Dazzle for bayesian analysis of networks, FPTC for safety analysis of systems designs, and so on, but these are not currently available as open source. We do supply a couple of very simple engines, just to demonstrate how to connect the engine up to Blobs.

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:*
   * http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/darcs/Blobs/

---++ 4. Haskell DB
(_from the Haskell DB homepage_)

Haskell DB is a combinator library for expressing queries and other operations on relational databases in a type safe and declarative way. All the queries and operations are completely expressed within Haskell, no embedded (SQL) commands are needed. This close integration makes it possible to do arbitrary computations on the database (like computing the transitive closure) and makes it very easy to combine Haskell DB with other combinator libraries (like Erik Meijer's CGI library or John Hughes pretty printer).

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:*
   * http://www.haskell.org/haskellDB/
   * http://haskelldb.sourceforge.net/
   * http://www.haskell.org/hawiki/HaskellDbTutorial
   * [[http://www.cs.uu.nl/~daan/pubs.html][Domain Specific Embedded Compilers (Leijen, Meijer)]]
   
---++ 5. Financial Combinators
(_from Simon PJ's homepage_)

Financial and insurance contracts do not sound like promising territory for functional programming and formal semantics, but in fact we have discovered that insights from programming languages bear directly on the complex subject of describing and valuing a large class of contracts.

We introduce a combinator library that allows us to describe such contracts precisely, and a compositional denotational semantics that says what such contracts are worth. We sketch an implementation of our combinator library in Haskell. Interestingly, lazy evaluation plays a crucial role.

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:*
   * http://research.microsoft.com/Users/simonpj/Papers/financial-contracts/contracts-icfp.htm
   * [[http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/Papers/financial-contracts/contracts-icfp.htm][How to write a financial contract (Peyton Jones, Eber)]]

---++ 6. Pan# 
_(from the Pan# homepage)_

Pan# combines basic mathematical operations with functional abstraction and a simple vocabulary of images. This language puts the tools of visualization in the hands of the student and instructor rather than hiding them deep inside bundled software. Images are defined in a very simple and direct way, free of the details that tell a computer how to display the image. Because images are described using mathematical functions, this language is entirely appropriate for anyone with knowledge of basic algebra.

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:*
   * http://haskell.org/edsl/pansharp.html
   * http://haskell.org/edsl/pangallery.htm
   * [[http://conal.net/papers/functional-images/fop-conal.pdf][Functional images (Elliott)]]
   * [[http://www.acooke.org/jara/pancito/][Pancito]]

---++ 7. Pretty Printing

There are a number of combinator libraries around for pretty printing. Papers by
John Hughes and Philip Wadler describe the theory behind these libraries.

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:*
   * http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Libraries_and_tools/Compiler_tools#Pretty_printing

---++ 8. Server-side Web Scripting (WASH)

WASH/CGI is an EDSL for server-side Web scripting with Sessions, Compositional Forms, and Graphics.

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:*
   * http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~thiemann/haskell/WASH/#washcgi

---++ 9. Web Functions

Robert van Herk wrote his Master's thesis about Web Functions
Web Functions is a DSEL for developing websites, implemented in Haskell. Web Functions is a domain specific embedded language for web authoring, implemented in Haskell. The functionality of the Web Functions framework was inspired by Apple&#8217;s Web Objects (http://www.apple.com/WebObjects).

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:*
   * http://www.cs.uu.nl/wiki/WebFunctions
   * http://www.cs.uu.nl/wiki/pub/WebFunctions/Documentation/thesis.pdf

---++ 10. Yampa/Frag
_(from the Yampa homepage)_

Yampa is the culmination of our efforts to provide domain-specific embedded languages for the programming of hybrid systems using the concepts of Functional Reactive Programming (FRP). Yampa is structured using arrows, which greatly reduce the chance of introducing space- and time-leaks into reactive, time-varying systems.

Yampa was used to program the game entities of Frag, a 3D first person shooting game written in Haskell, by Mun Hon Cheong.

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:*
   * http://www.haskell.org/yampa/
   * [[http://www.haskell.org/yale/papers/oxford02/][Arrows, Robots, and Functional Reactive Programming (Hudak, Nilsson, Courtney, Peterson)]]
   * [[http://www.ida.liu.se/~henni/papers.html][The Yampa Arcade (Courtney, Nilsson, Peterson)]]
   * http://haskell.org/hawiki/Frag
   * http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~pls/thesis/munc-thesis.pdf

---++ 11. Fran

This article presents one approach to declarative programming of interactive content, as realized in a prototype system called Fran, for "Functional reactive animation" [Elliott and Hudak 1997, Elliott 1997]. Fran is a high level vocabulary that allows one to describe the essential nature of an animated model, while omitting details of presentation. Moreover, because this vocabulary is embedded in a modern functional programming language (Haskell), the animation models thus described are reusable and composable in powerful ways.

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:*
   * http://conal.net/fran/tutorial.htm
   * http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/elliott97functional.html

---++ 12. Lava

Lava is a hardware description language based upon the functional programming language Haskell. Its main aim is to show that modern programming language features such as type inference, polymorphism, higher-order functions, type classes, and laziness are very useful even in hardware description.

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:*
   * http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~koen/Lava/
   * http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Libraries_and_tools/Hardware_verification
   * [[http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~bjesse/lava.ps][Lava: Hardware design in Haskell (Bjesse, Claessen, Sheeran, Singh)]]

---++ 13. Haskell Server Pages

Haskell Server Pages (HSP) is an extension of vanilla Haskell, targetted at the task of writing dynamic server-side web pages.

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:
   * http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~d00nibro/hsp/

---++ 14. Tangible Values

TV is a library for composing tangible values ("TVs"), i.e., values that carry along external interfaces

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:*
   * http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/TV

---++ 15. Dynamic Generation of HTML (WASH)

WASH/HTML is an EDSL for generating dynamic HTML documents.

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:*
   * http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~thiemann/haskell/WASH/#washhtml

---++ 16. Functional Meta Post

Functional Meta Post is a Haskell frontend to the Meta Post language by John Hobby

*Difficulty:* <img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">
<img src="%ATTACHURLPATH%/stargold.gif" alt="star">

*Resources:*
   * http://cryp.to/funcmp/

Topic attachments
I	Attachment	Action	Size	Date	Who	Comment
pdf	AFPDSLpresentation.pdf	manage	640.8 K	22 Mar 2007 - 10:26	TimSmienk	WASH slides
ppt	DSLpresentation.ppt	manage	246.0 K	04 Apr 2007 - 06:04	JeielSchalkwijk	XML Tools Presentation, Jeiel en Joost
pdf	FMP.pdf	manage	168.4 K	28 Mar 2007 - 19:03	MartijnVanSteenbergen	Functional MetaPost? slides
ppt	Fran.ppt	manage	425.5 K	09 Mar 2007 - 07:42	BastiaanHeeren	Fran slides
zip	Fran.zip	manage	1347.4 K	07 Mar 2007 - 18:21	MarkStobbe	Fran presentation
zip	HSPexamples.zip	manage	3.7 K	21 Mar 2007 - 16:07	NiekVanDerMaas	HSP examples
pdf	HaskellServerPages.pdf	manage	749.9 K	21 Mar 2007 - 16:06	NiekVanDerMaas	HSP slides
ppt	Haskore.ppt	manage	610.5 K	22 Mar 2007 - 14:48	BastiaanHeeren	Haskore slides
zip	Material_DSL_PAN.zip	manage	346.0 K	09 Mar 2007 - 10:11	GuangyuZhang	Material of Pan#, demos and slides
pdf	Pan.pdf	manage	500.3 K	12 Mar 2007 - 07:40	BastiaanHeeren	Pan# slides
pdf	WASH2fCGI.pdf	manage	356.9 K	21 Mar 2007 - 14:02	MartinMatusiak	delete
pdf	WASH_CGI.pdf	manage	358.0 K	28 Mar 2007 - 22:17	MartinMatusiak	WASH/CGI slides
pdf	Yampa.pdf	manage	434.9 K	04 Apr 2007 - 11:47	BastiaanHeeren	Yampa slides
txt	feedback-form1.txt	manage	1.1 K	06 Mar 2007 - 08:57	BastiaanHeeren	Feedback form
txt	feedback-form2.txt	manage	1.1 K	20 Mar 2007 - 07:34	BastiaanHeeren	Feedback form
txt	feedback-form3.txt	manage	1.4 K	27 Mar 2007 - 15:39	BastiaanHeeren	Feedback form
pdf	fruit.pdf	manage	838.7 K	02 Apr 2007 - 06:21	BastiaanHeeren	Slides Fruit
zip	haskelldb_examples.zip	manage	24.2 K	04 Apr 2007 - 11:50	BastiaanHeeren	Examples HaskellDB?
pdf	haskelldb_handout.pdf	manage	142.5 K	04 Apr 2007 - 11:51	BastiaanHeeren	Haskell DB Slides
pdf	presentatie.pdf	manage	200.0 K	21 Mar 2007 - 18:38	MaaikeGerritsen?	Presentatie Pretty Printing
pdf	tv-slides.pdf	manage	379.1 K	28 Mar 2007 - 15:36	BastiaanHeeren	Slides Tangible Values
gz	wash_cgi.tar.gz	manage	17.6 K	21 Mar 2007 - 14:28	MartinMatusiak	WASH/CGI example code