Mutual Roles of Model-Driven Software Engineering and Low-Code Development Platform

Abstract

In the last few years, we have witnessed a significant growth of "low-code development platforms" (LCDPs) in attracting the attention of both the market and the academia. LCDPs are visual development platforms that typically run on the cloud, reducing the need for manual coding. They are also used by non-professional developers with limited knowledge in programming to construct applications. In this paper, the characteristics of well-known LCDPs are first studied to evaluate the advantages of this approach. Given that the low-code platforms have many goals and features in common with the model-driven engineering (MDE) approaches, it is necessary to examine the position of these platforms in comparison with the MDE approaches and identify the strengths and weaknesses of both. One of the reasons for the popularity of the LCDP platforms is the use of cloud computing, which most model-driven engineering approaches have failed to achieve. Therefore, in this article, we review the solutions for using cloud computing in MDE to apply these approaches to develop low-code platforms and apply the approach on a modeling language for smart contracts.

Keywords

• model-driven engineering
• low-code development platform
• cloud computing