A Domain Specific Language for UN/CEFACT's Core Components

In order to overcome the heterogeneities of different business document standards the United Nations Center for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) has released the Core Components Technical Specification (CCTS). Core components are reusable building blocks for assembling business documents in an implementation neutral manner. However, core components are standardized without considering a specific implementation format and thus no tool integration is possible. Currently a syntax specific solution for core components, based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML), is provided with the UML Profile for Core Components (UPCC). In this paper we circumvent the complex UML meta model and provide a dedicated core component modeling environment based on a Domain Specific Language (DSL). Thereby, core component models are assembled on a conceptual level. In a next step the conceptual document model is used for the generation of domain specific artifacts. Our DSL based solution provides in situ validation of conceptual core component models and the flexible generation of deployment artifacts such as XML Schema definitions, used for the definition of interfaces in a service oriented environment.