AI-Assisted Development

How Does Mendix Leverage AI to Help Users to Build Applications?

Mendix leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to help development teams model and deliver Mendix applications faster, with more consistency and with higher quality. This is an emerging trend in software development, commonly known as AI-Assisted Development (AIAD). AIAD in the Mendix platform is called Mendix Assist. Mendix Assist consists of different capabilities that act as virtual co-developer bots, each specialized in a certain domain or stage of the application lifecycle development. Currently, Mendix Assist consists of three virtual co-developer bots: MxAssist Logic Bot, MxAssist Best Practice Bot and MxAssist Validation Bot.

How Does Mendix Leverage AI to Help Users to Build Application Logics Faster With Higher Quality?

Mendix enables you to visually build application logic easily with microflows and nanoflows instead of having to write code. To make this ever easier, MxAssist Logic Bot (which is an AI-powered virtual co-developer bot) guides you through modeling and configuring your application logic (microflows). It gives you a real-time and context-driven list of the next best actions based on the application logic already designed and other context-related information.

 

MxAssist Logic Bot is built using machine learning analysis of over twelve million anonymized application logics (microflows)—built with Mendix over a decade—to detect and learn the best practice patterns in microflows.

The key features of MxAssist Logic Bot are the following:

  • Next best action suggestion – recommends the top five next best actions out of more than 50 different options
  • Auto-configuration – not only provides the next best action, but automates further development by pre-populating the parameters for such an action
  • Contextual suggestions – derives context in different ways, including “looking’” left and right in a logic when the developer inserts a new element or action mid-flow and inferring the context using the page where the logic is used

MxAssist Logic Bot enhances developer productivity and learnability by suggesting the next best actions in developing microflows. For more information about how to use the MxAssist Logic Bot, see MxAssist Logic Bot in the Mendix Studio Pro Guide.

How Does Mendix Leverage AI to Help Users to Build Applications According to Mendix Best Practices?

Development teams often spend substantial time training, enforcing, and peer-reviewing the implementation of best practices. Even then, new developers might follow some anti-patterns that are hard to detect during development and fix after deployment.

MxAssist Best Practice Bot is an intelligent virtual co-developer bot that helps you improve your app by inspecting your app model against Mendix development best practice in Mendix Studio Pro. It detects anti-patterns during the design and development, pinpoints you to these anti-patterns, suggests you how to resolve it, and in some cases can automatically fix these issues.

It consists of a three-level assistance:

  1. Detection – The bot inspects the model, identifies issue, and pinpoints you to the document/element causing the issue.
  2. Recommendation – The bot explains the identified issue, the potential impact, and how to fix it. There is also a detailed best practice guide with a dedicated step-by-step guideline of how to fix the issue.
  3. Auto-fixing – The bot can automatically implement the best practice and fix the issue.

MxAssist Best Practice Bot is built using statistical analysis of thousands of anonymized Mendix app to learn common anti-patterns as well as using Mendix Expert Services best practices in the development of microflows, domain models, pages, security, and so on. MxAssist Best Practice Bot enhances development efficiency by substantially reducing peer reviews, educates junior developers on best practices, increases developer productivity via the automatic detection and pinpointing of issues, and provides assistance for addressing these issues. For more information about how to use Mendix Best Practice Bot, see Mendix Best Practice Bot in the Mendix Studio Pro Guide.

How Does Mendix Leverage AI to Help Users to Build Data Validations Faster?

Validation rules are conditions that should be satisfied before an object is committed. There are different ways to set up data validations in Mendix. Building data validations in microflows can be a manual and repetitive task. MxAssist Validation Bot helps to build validation microflows in a more automated way using pre-built expressions, data validation checks, and auto-generation of the validation microflows.

MxAssist Validation Bot enhances developer productivity by automating repetitive and manual tasks; and help them to focus on the innovative tasks. For more information about how to use the MxAssist Validation Bot, see MxAssist Validation Bot in the Mendix Studio Pro Guide.

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