Microsoft no longer support the graphical tool "Quadrant", but MGrammar is still supported and integrated to SQL server, right? MGrammar is the "DSL making language".
Still, I would say that functional languages (read: F#) are the way to go.
This book has a simple example of how to make a DSL with F#: http://www.manning.com/petricek/
and also Google finds many other good references about this topic.
Martin Fowler has a new book about DSL:s. Sadly, it won't discuss much about Microsoft's tooling nor functional languages.
Microsoft no longer support the graphical tool "Quadrant", but MGrammar is still supported and integrated to SQL server, right? MGrammar is the "DSL making language".
Still, I would say that functional languages (read: F#) are the way to go.
This book has a simple example of how to make a DSL with F#: http://www.manning.com/petricek/ and also Google finds many other good references about this topic.
"From the ground up" is a quite relative term, especially if you consider Python as the implementation language. I think what you are looking for is the implementation of a domain specific language (DSL). Good starting points might be this book or this one. DSLs are a wide topic, so if you provide more details, we might be able to give better tips.
Martin Fowler has written a book on DSLs (Amazon link). Ayende Rahien has completed a book on writing DSLs in Boo, which also is available online via Manning's early access program. The former is conceptual while the latter is a practical guide.