Generating Low-Code Applications from Enterprise Ontology

Abstract

Due to factors such as hyper-competition, increasing expectations from customers, regulatory changes, and technological advancements, the conditions in which enterprises need to thrive become increasingly turbulent. As a result, enterprise agility, or flexibility, becomes an increasingly important determinant for enterprise success. Since Information System (IS) development often is a limiting factor in achieving enterprise flexibility, enterprise flexibility and (automated) IS flexibility cannot be viewed separately and choices that regard flexibility should not be left to developers. By taking a Model-based Engineering (MBE) approach, starting from ontological models of the enterprise and explicit organization design decisions, we bridge the gap from organizational flexibility to (automated) IS flexibility, in such a way that IT is no longer the limiting factor for enterprise flexibility. Low-code technology is a growing market trend that builds on MBE concepts. In this paper, we report on an mapping for (the automation of) the creation of a Mendix low-code application from the ontological model of an enterprise, while also accommodating the required organizational implementation flexibility. Even though the algorithm has been tested successfully on multiple cases, supporting all possible organizational flexibility seems to be an NP -hard problem, and more research is required to check the feasibility and usability of this approach.