Sectional domain specific languages

Nowadays, many problems are solved by using a domain specific language (DSL), i.e., a programming language tailored to work on a particular application domain. Normally, a new DSL is designed and implemented from scratch requiring a long time-to-market due to implementation and testing issues. Whereas when the DSL simply extends another language it is realized as a source-to-source transformation or as an external library with limited flexibility. The Hive framework is developed with the intent of overcoming these issues by providing a mechanism to compose different programming features together forming a new DSL, what we call a sectional DSL. The support (both at compiler and interpreter level) of each feature is separately described and easily composed with the others. This approach is quite flexible and permits to build up a new DSL from scratch or simplifying an existing language without penalties. Moreover, it has the desirable side-effect that each DSL can be extended at any time potentially also at run-time.