From App Builders to App Editors

• Autor(a) principal: Ramalho, João Luís Guerreiro
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/145199
• topic: OutSystems; Builders; Editors; Model Transformations; BPT; MDE; Domínio/Área Científica::Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia Eletrotécnica, Eletrónica e Informática

OutSystems provides a model-driven development and delivery platform aided by a rich visual environment, allowing developers to create enterprise-grade web and mobile applications. Until recently, most of this development capability came from Service Studio, the platform’s Integrated Development Environment (IDE), with which developers can quickly design a fully-fledged application. Nevertheless, in recent times the company has strived to offer a new collection of tools more focused on specific aspects of application development. The builders are tools that allow for non-IT related users to generate complete software solutions, with a small number of interactions, therefore reducing complexities correlated with the assembly of multiple-layer applications. Currently, there are two builders generally available: the Experience Builder providing greater focus towards the initial User Experience (UX) development, and theWorkflow Builder, associated with the design of task management and automation applications. Even though the OutSystems platform allows the combined use of the builders with Service Studio, currently this compatibility is unidirectional. That is, an application created using the Experience Builder, for instance, can be edited in the IDE but the inverse process is not possible. More specifically this shortcoming precludes a builder to update an application created or edited with any OutSystems tool. This substantially damages the chance for collaboration between different types of users employing different Out- Systems tools. The present dissertation sets as its paramount objective the enabling of different personas, both business and tech-oriented, to collaborate on the development of an enterprise-level application, employing the entire set of tools provided by the platform. From a more detailed standpoint, this work consists in the development of necessary model transformations proficient in supporting continuous and collaborative interoperability. Hence, this dissertation aims to expand the reach of the OutSystems product line, but also, from an academic standpoint, it hopes to provide a useful contribution to Model Driven Engineering and model transformations, advancing the state-of-the-art.