Dissertaç ˜ao de Mestrado Mestrado em Engenharia Informática Jo ...

4
An Implementation
Chapter 3 approached the application configuration framework by identifying the require-
ments to be met and defining a tool workflow and component architecture. This chapter de-
scribes the implementation of that framework, developed in the context of this thesis.
First, implementation decisions of several orders are presented. Section 4.1 presents the
adopted programming language, Section 4.2 presents the adopted parser generator and Sec-
tion 4.3 presents the adopted generic syntax format. Then, Section 4.4 shows the implementa-
tion of the created data structures in terms of the motivation for their use and their functionality.
Afterwards, Section 4.5 presents the details of the Original to Generic syntax Converter com-
ponent implementation, Section 4.6 shows how the files in generic syntax are printed back to
original syntax and last, Section 4.7 displays the Generic to Original syntax Converter compo-
nent implementation.
4.1 Programming Language
As it is well known, programming languages differ from each other not only in terms of sup-
ported programming paradigms, but also expressive power, documentation, popularity, etc.
Among the requirements that the programming language was expected to meet, two had a
special weight in the time of decision: the chosen programming language should be object-
oriented due to the modular nature of the tool and high-level to easily and quickly provide
programming tools such as data types, data structures, etc.
Given the previous considerations, the decision fell on the Java 1 programming language,
considering it supports the object-oriented programming paradigm, among many other pro-
gramming paradigms, is high-level and its API (Application Programming Interface) is well
1 http://java.sun.com/
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