Software development is harder than it’s ever been. Development teams are dealing with ever-increasing backlogs. They need to juggle between delivering new services and maintaining their already existing products. Technology continues to evolve and get more sophisticated, pressuring developers to acquire new skills to respond to the lack of talent available.
So, how can development teams deliver new and innovative solutions that business needs at the speed the market demands to remain competitive?
That’s where a reusable, component-based architecture can come in handy.
In a nutshell, a reusable architecture is the art of using already-existing assets in different applications and not only for the one they were originally designed for. You can look at it as building blocks that you can reuse and assemble in different ways to get different products. Kind of like Legos.
This means a few things:
- You don’t have to code things twice because you can use already-built modules to create your apps.
- You don’t have to edit, fix, or debug code in multiple places because the code is centralized in one place—in the modules that the apps will consume
- It simplifies multiple developers working on the same application, enabling differing release cycles.
- It breaks down the application into more easily manageable and understandable pieces.
Consequently, you’re able to accelerate application development and maximize developer productivity exponentially and with less effort while keeping the existing apps simple to maintain. But how do you do this? Simple: with low-code platforms like OutSystems.
Designing for Reusability
I want to start by saying that not all applications should be designed for reusability. That’s up to you to decide: will you want to reuse the data, workflows, business logic, or integrations in other apps? If you answer yes to any of these questions, it’s time for reusability.
Using OutSystems, you can either create an app from scratch or pull modules and widgets you had already created in the past to reuse. And one of the big advantages of doing it this way is that, depending on whether you’re using Service actions or Server actions, if you make a change to the original module—the one you’re consuming—that will immediately refresh all the dependencies.
So, not only do you not have to repeat code, but when a REST API changes for the 50th time or your company logo changes from blue to red, you only have to make the change in the original module, and all the others consuming it will automatically be updated. No need to recompile all the consuming applications! What a way to save time!
Plus, you can also use code repositories, like the OutSystems Forge, to take your apps up a notch. This is really cool because if there is something that you don’t know how to create, let’s say adding a Google Maps widget to your app, you can simply grab it from the OutSystems Forge and use it.
And, to make your life even easier, with OutSystems low-code platform, you have access to the AI Mentor System that provides valuable insights and recommendations for how to improve your application architecture.
You can see a real-life demo on how to reuse code with OutSystems in the video below.
Or, even better, you can test it for yourself by signing up for the free edition of our platform.
Additional Resources
- [Blog post] Why Investing in Code Reusability Is a Must
- [Blog post] 3 Reasons Why You Should Invest in a Component-Based Architecture
- [Evaluation Guide] OutSystems and Code Reusability
- [Documentation] Code Reusability and Modularity
