Metaphors for Declarative Systems

I am working on my presentation for the 2007 semantic technology conference. My topic is the semantics of declarative languages.

I am attempting to present to business strategists that may not appreciate how powerful the new XForms and XQuery standards are and how entire rich user experience web 2.0 applications can be built using these tools as long as the tools have RESTful interfaces.

My first consideration is to find the right metaphors. I am working with the evolution metaphor and the puzzle metaphor right now and it seems to be working well.

I have also done some research on Domain Specific Languages and I see that they have also used the evolution metaphor but I find that they are focused on building small languages that are specific to a group or project and they don't really look at the external semantics of the problem.

Please write me if you are also trying to explain the business benefits of either declarative languages to a non-technical audience and if you have found metaphors that get the key points across.


Thanks! - Dan