Language Oriented Modularity : A Practical Approach ∗

Language Oriented Modularity (LOM) is a methodology that involves the implementation and immediate utilization of domain-specific languages (DSLs) that are also aspect-oriented (DSALs). In principle, DSALs are often the right tool for improving the modularity of modern software projects and an LOM process is necessary due to the difficulty to reuse them across applications. In practice, however, LOM is often impractical and DSALs are underutilized in real-world projects. In this work, we present a novel approach to reduce the implementation cost of DSALs and increase the effectiveness of using DSALs. Consequently, the cost-effectiveness of LOM is improved to a level that makes it practical for a real-world software development process. We validate our approach by implementing it concretely for Java. We evaluate our approach by examining the cost-effectiveness of applying LOM using our approach to open source projects.