Domain-Specific Languages and Digital Preservation Supporting Knowledge-Management

Domain-specific languages (DSLs) are languages most suitable for a specific application domain. They abandon generality to increase expressiveness and ease of use. DSLs are an useful alternative to general-purpose languages, but their appropriateness and profitableness should be carefully considered. In this paper the utilisation of DSL knowledge to improve digital preservation practices is elaborated, which leads to the following results: A DSL for emulator development reduces implementation effort and increases comprehensibility and durability. The DSL XML provides format standardisation for information stored in plain text. A DSL especially for the domain digital preservation is not practicable and digital pre-servation is better supported by the right mix of DSLs. The results are particularly interesting from a knowledge-management perspective since gathered knowledge should be preserved.