Abstract: It is the direction to improve the efficiency of software development and the source of the concept of low code to change the uncertainty factor into the certainty factor and leave the complexity to the platform and the simplicity to the developer.
AppCube enables CitizenDeveloper, and everyone is a developer. This article is from huawei cloud community.
In the process of digital transformation, enterprises are faced with the uncertainty of software development. Such as the communication between developers, flexible business, software engineer skill differences, the emergence of new technology, etc., resulting in a large gap between the actual results of software development and the input of human workload.
Making uncertainty into certainty, leaving complexity to the platform and simplicity to the developer, is the constant direction of software development efficiency improvement and the source of the idea of low code.
From the perspective of software development process: from machine language to assembly language, to object-oriented, functional and other high-level languages, software development technology is actually climbing a “reuse” tree. The manifestation of reuse is mainly embodied as: componentization and framing. Both of these manifestations are characteristics of low-code development platforms.
Gartner predicts that by 2024, low-code application development will be responsible for over 65% of application development activities. Low code will become the dominant development approach for the next generation of enterprise IT systems.
AppCube, a low-code development platform based on Huawei’s internal processes and IT best practices, can build various business processes with only drag and drop operation, which really helps enterprises to develop quickly and respond to market development.
So, what are the features of AppCube, a low-code development platform, that help users develop applications quickly? How open is the platform?
To this end, Huawei Cloud developer community invited huawei Cloud AppCube expert group teachers, listen to them talk about huawei cloud low code application.
1. How to correctly understand what is low code? What are the core values of low code development?
Low code is a relative concept. Development that reduces the amount of code is, literally, low code. We think that low code platform refers to the development platform for business developers, shielding the underlying technical complexity, mainly in a visual way, supplemented by a small amount of code, which is used to quickly build a variety of application systems.
If we apply the evolution theory of nature, low code can be regarded as the evolution and evolution of software development mode in response to the rapid growth of software business scale and the ever-increasing complexity of software business in the cloud computing era. Its core value lies in helping a large number of traditional enterprises build application systems in a low threshold and low cost way, and helping enterprises give full play to the computing power advantages of cloud computing after the upper cloud.
2. What was AppCube designed for? In what ways does AppCube improve the ability of developers to build applications?
AppCube was jointly designed and developed by experts at home and abroad in 2015. AppCube was previously applied in the telecom industry to reduce the customized manpower input of telecom software.
AppCube offers four capabilities to help developers build applications efficiently: first, the ability to arrange components, layouts, and colors on a page; Second, relevant data modeling capabilities for preserving business data; Third, business logic orchestration ability, based on automatic machine execution, without human intervention process, can be efficiently choreographed; Fourth, THE ability of BPM process choreography to solve human intervention and approval process problems.
Of course, the enterprise digitization scenario is very complex. To this end, Huawei Cloud application Rubik’s Cube AppCube provides development capabilities in all scenarios: Professional software development engineers and enterprise IT personnel can quickly develop applications with low code development capabilities; For business people, build quickly with some drag and drop with zero code capability; For professional problems facing professional fields, such as complex business algorithms, developers can use Java, Python and other languages to develop and publish them to AppCube low-code platform for hosting and invocation in the form of microservices.
3. There are many low-code development products on the market. What are AppCube’s core competencies that make it stand out?
AppCube provides not only application development capabilities, but also application operation and maintenance capabilities, including application hosting, deployment, and upgrade capabilities, application operation and maintenance capabilities (such as alarm monitoring and log monitoring) on the tenant side, and runtime configuration capabilities. Some low-code products on the market only provide the ability to start and stop applications or even have no application hosting capability.
In terms of application development capability, AppCube is equipped with Huawei digital transformation gene and can better support the development of complex application scenarios and core business software in the industry. The overall architecture of AppCube is metadata-driven and provides the general service entrance and Serverless back-end support, which perfectly solves the problem of application construction in complex scenarios of digital transformation.
As an open capability portal, AppCube provides a way to quickly invoke huawei cloud capabilities, WeLink capabilities, and third-party system capabilities, making it easier for developers to use advanced technologies and services. AppCube also supports asset accumulation and reuse, and past experience can be developed into assets/services to be shared on the shelf, so that every AppCube developer can stand on the shoulders of others to go further.
4. What services/tools does Huawei Cloud app AppCube provide for developers to help them improve their efficiency quickly?
AppCube provides three services for developers from application development to online operation: first, developer services. It provides a development environment for developers to quickly arrange and develop applications, as well as arrange corresponding services or call micro-services. Second, sandbox test service, the developed application can be packaged to the test environment quickly for the test before the business goes online. Third, running service, the tested application can be packaged and installed to the running environment to make the application go online.
For example, in the development environment, AppCube provides rich application templates to achieve 0-1 development and precipitation. Application templates can be directly installed and used, and the source code can be directly modified on this template for customization. For example, in the case of equipment maintenance, the user will call the customer service personnel, who will immediately create a work order after receiving the call and send it to the engineer for maintenance. There are many templates for such practical application scenarios. Huawei Cloud AppCube template market can be directly subscribed and immediately online, which is equivalent to opening a lot of source code based on application scenarios. Templates are actually some open source code.
5. What development scenarios can be developed using Huawei Cloud application Rubik’s Cube?
AppCube can build the following four types of application creation: First, build complex internal process, internal management and production management applications of 2B enterprises. Second, build display applications such as enterprise large screen and leadership cockpit. Third, it can build small programs and other applications on mobile phones. Fourth, it can build light applications such as office and process. Click the experience
AppCube operates on the page
Example of mobile application
IOC large screen application example
Example of decoration management system
6. How to solve the data storage and security problems caused by the application of AppCube?
In terms of data storage, AppCube provides database, and CRUD operations such as storage, access, processing and transmission of business data generated during application running can be completed through corresponding API.
AppCube supports automatic caching of development data acquired under lock, inactive state and unprotected when developing or editing service choreography, scripts, BPM, state machines, standard pages, page assets in App, BO or Addon App. By default, the storage is saved every 15 minutes for a maximum of 7 days.
In terms of application security protection, AppCube tenant data is isolated from each other and complies with Huawei cloud service security standards. Applications also developed using AppCube templates are distinguished by different namespace prefixes for different tenants. In other words, applications created using the same template for different tenants are different.
7. Is template modification and further development in AppCube open to developers?
AppCube provides a variety of platform capabilities for application configuration development. After creating an application using a template, you can view the resource directory of the current application in the directory tree on the left of the development page and modify the resource directory, such as adding or deleting pages, service logic, processes, and scripts. You can also select the application elements such as components and primitives that you want to modify and modify the corresponding Settings in the element configuration box on the right of the page.
Not only that, but AppCube gives developers the freedom to create their own software templates and share them.
8. In the process of opening the product to the outside world, will there be relevant learning materials and demonstration videos of practical operation for developers? What are the plans in this regard?
We have a free AppCube learning course in Huawei Cloud Academy (click to learn more about it). The platform development environment also has a built-in learning center and practical exercise section, with case demonstration videos and video operation guidance. We also hold regular AppCube developer sessions on the cloud (check out the event), where we talk live about developer issues and new features on the platform. In addition, you can follow the Huawei Cloud AppCube Developer Forum and AppCube official account (wechat id: AppCube Application Rubik cube) to get the information of holding and signing up for the exchange meeting.
9. With the increasing interest in low code development, how do you see the next development of low code development? What is AppCube planning for the next product development process?
Attention for improvement of the market for low code, that is good for product areas, would emerge a large number of low code business platform, the market of low code platform experience will also be higher expectation and requirement, will be more competitive and industry will be developed gradually mature, low code development area will appear in all walks of life more fine, more industry attributes of the platform, We expect industry standards and platform specifications to evolve.
In the future, AppCube will continue to optimize the development experience by introducing zero-code experience scenarios to lower the threshold for developers to get started. Deepen the integration with office collaboration software WeLink, promote the construction of capacity connector, and serve enterprise digitization well; Cooperate with partners from all walks of life to build a platform, do a good job in ecology and serve developers well.
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