Building End-User Programming Systems Based on a Domain-Specific Languages

End-users of automation software systems – which are the machine operators – have the task to provide machine settings and program simple control algorithms to adapt and optimize the machine to the specific automation tasks at hand. End-user programming systems are therefore an intrinsic part of automation systems. In this paper we report on a project with the goal to build a software framework which allows realizing end-user programming systems with minimal effort. Our approach is based on a new component-based programming language Monaco for event-based machine control, a compiler-generator to realize a Monaco compiler, a virtual machine for execution of Monaco programs, and an Eclipse- and GEF-based modelling and program development environment.