Integration of micro-services as components in modeling environments for low code development

Abstract

Low code development environments are gaining attention due to their potential as a development paradigm for very large scale adoption in the future IT. In this paper, we propose a method to extend the (application) Domain Specific Languages supported by two low code development environments based on formal models, namely DIME (native Java) and Pyro (native Python), to include functionalities hosted on heterogeneous technologies and platforms. For this we follow the analogy of micro services. After this integration, both environments can leverage the communication with pre-existing remote RESTful and enterprise systems’ services, in our case Amazon Web Services (AWS) (but this can be easily generalized to other cloud platforms). Developers can this way utilize within DIME and Pyro the potential of sophisticated services, potentially the entire Python and AWS ecosystems, as libraries of drag and drop components in their model driven, low-code style. The new DSLs are made available in DIME and Pyro as collections of implemented SIBs and blocks. Due to the specific capabilities and checks underlying the DIME and Pyro platforms, the individual DSL functionalities are automatically validated for semantic and syntactical errors in both environments.