2. Using AI for App Development

Using AI for developing and managing applications enhances efficiency by automating repetitive tasks, improves accuracy with intelligent decision-making capabilities, and accelerates development cycles. The market-leading Al capabilities in OutSystems offer a set of capabilities that work as artificial intelligence experts specializing in different parts of the software development process. It is like having mentors on call to enhance the collective expertise of your team.

This ecosystem of AI-powered mentors - the OutSystems AI Mentor System - is a comprehensive set of groundbreaking AI-based development and quality analysis tools that guide, automate, and validate development work. As a result, your developers are more productive and can deliver higher-quality applications. It supports developers in every aspect of the software development lifecycle and ensures all applications are built and maintained to the highest possible quality standards.

Table of contents

• Leveraging a visual model and interactions in the AI Mentor System
• Curating recommendations to make the AI “safer”
• Guidance and logic-building assistance - Code Mentor Overview
• End-to-end guidance while creating high-quality apps - AI Mentor Studio Overview
• Automated architecture analysis - Architecture Mentor overview
• Guided Refactoring - Maintainability Mentor Overview
• Enhancing application performance - Performance Mentor overview
• Fortifying applications - Security Mentor overview

Leveraging a visual model and interactions in the AI Mentor System

In OutSystems, thanks to its visual model, visual suggestions provide developers with concrete examples, ideas, and inspiration for their desired outcomes. Visual cues enable developers to gain a clearer understanding of the possibilities and explore creative avenues in their development process. This ability to quickly grasp AI suggestions and receive visual inspiration drives highly effective application development teams and fosters a more intuitive and streamlined development experience.

Curating recommendations to make the AI “safer”

The visual model in OutSystems enables the effective curation of suggestions. By presenting code in a visually accessible format, it becomes significantly easier to read, thereby enhancing safety measures and reducing the likelihood of errors or vulnerabilities.

Moreover, the higher level of abstraction afforded by the visual model empowers developers as curators of the suggestions, to delve into patterns and optimize the AI to provide only the safest recommendations that adhere to best practices. The clarity and comprehensibility of the code facilitated by the visual model allows it to refine and fine-tune the AI output, ensuring the suggestions align with industry standards and guidelines.

An additional advantage of the visual model lies in its inherent consistency. Regardless of the modifications or choices made, the model remains coherent and dependable. The role of artificial intelligence extends beyond generating suggestions; it also serves to apply the user preferences and selections to the model. Through the implementation of effective mechanisms such as tree changes, OutSystems guarantees that the model maintains its complete consistency throughout the development process.

Guidance and logic-building assistance - Code Mentor Overview

Code Mentor provides guidance and support to both novice and experienced OutSystems users, thereby accelerating their work and enabling them to experience seamless and productive development.

One of the key features of Code Mentor is its Guidance functionality. Integrated into the OuSystems IDE, this smart help function uses AI to comprehend the development context and the developer's actions and offer precise and relevant suggestions. This feature facilitates faster learning for new users, allowing them to grasp the platform's intricacies more efficiently, and enables all developers to overcome challenges and avoid getting stuck.

Another crucial capability of Code Mentor is the assistance it provides during the logic-building process. By providing contextual suggestions, Code Mentor significantly reduces the time developers spend on completing various actions. This streamlined approach empowers developers to work more efficiently and effectively.

Code Mentor also encompasses the Natural Language Data Manipulation feature, which utilizes natural language understanding models. This functionality enables users to write and comprehend data manipulation queries using plain English, eliminating the need to learn SQL or any proprietary language. By expressing their query intentions in English, users can describe the desired data and outcomes, and the algorithm within Code Mentor intelligently interprets their needs. The system then aggregates the relevant data, enhancing usability and accessibility.

Through its intelligent guidance, streamlined logic-building assistance, and natural language data manipulation capabilities, Code Mentor empowers developers to overcome challenges, optimize their workflow, and achieve their objectives more efficiently.

End-to-end guidance while creating high-quality apps - AI Mentor Studio Overview

OutSystems AI Mentor Studio is a comprehensive set of tools that play a pivotal role in guiding users towards creating high-quality applications. It serves as a centralized hub where users can access detailed code analysis for various critical aspects such as architecture, maintainability, performance, and security. Powered by an advanced AI code analysis engine, AI Mentor Studio is continuously evolving to provide development teams with increasingly comprehensive, faster, and more accurate analysis.

The development and integration of AI technology represents a significant investment for OutSystems. It is already transforming the way OutSystems customers approach software development. These customers experience enhanced productivity, improved agility, and elevated software quality every day. The AI Mentor Studio stands as the culmination of the OutSystemscommitment to artificial intelligence innovation, embodying a dedication to empowering developers and organizations with cutting-edge tools and insights.

Automated architecture analysis - Architecture Mentor overview

Architecture Mentor automates the analysis of software architecture. It meticulously examines code structure and provides users with a comprehensive overview, enabling them to gain a deep understanding of the technical depth, the distribution of core and front-end modules, and their divisions within the system.

Architecture Mentor uses AI to classify and categorize complex cross-portfolio architectures automatically. Users then have a bird's-eye view of their technical debt, with the areas where opportunities for improvement highlighted. Users can identify and address architectural shortcomings, ultimately gaining enhanced system performance, scalability, and maintainability.

With Architecture Mentor, users can:

• Effectively navigate the complexities of their software architecture.
• Make informed decisions.
• Optimize their entire system so it aligns with the software industry’s best practices.

Guided Refactoring - Maintainability Mentor Overview

When it comes to maintainability, Guided Refactoring is a key capability offered in OutSystems Maintainability Mentor. Consider a scenario where a large organization has multiple teams spread across different countries, each building their own applications. It is highly unlikely that these distributed teams are aware of possible code duplication.

And this is where Maintainability Mentor comes into play. It thoroughly scans the codebase, identifying instances of code repetition and highlighting potential opportunities for refactoring. Not only does Maintainability Mentor flag areas of improvement, but it also guides developers through the refactoring process.

Accumulating duplicated code over time increases the likelihood of future issues and technical debt. Also, fixing the code in one instance while overlooking similar occurrences in other parts of the application can create inconsistency and vulnerability to hackers. By proactively addressing these code duplications through refactoring, OutSystems ensures the long-term maintainability of the applications, significantly reducing technical debt and enhancing software quality.

Guided refactoring also plays a vital role in future-proofing software by streamlining the codebase and reducing redundancy. Developers can improve the overall architecture and ensure that applications remain adaptable and resilient to future changes.

Enhancing application performance - Performance Mentor overview

OutSystems Performance Mentor leverages AI to analyze code and identify opportunities for enhancing application performance. Performance Mentor can understand the factors that contribute to decreased performance and detect code segments that may impact future performance. It proactively flags such issues, triggers warnings, and provides guidance about how to address them.

For instance, if a developer unintentionally introduces code that could potentially slow down the application in the future, Performance Mentor quickly identifies it and offers solutions for optimization. The mentor guides developers, showing them how to make changes that improve the application's speed and performance while maintaining the desired functionality. It may also suggest optimizations such as simplifying complex code structures, eliminating nested loops, or consolidating multiple queries into a single query.

By following the recommendations of Performance Mentor, developers gain valuable insights into areas where performance improvements without ever sacrificing functionality.

Fortifying applications - Security Mentor overview

OutSystems Security Mentor addresses one of the most critical concerns in the software development landscape - security.

Security Mentor provides multiple lines of defense to safeguard your applications, thoroughly examining and scrutinizing the applications you’ve developed for potential security vulnerabilities. Using AI, it efficiently identifies instances where security weaknesses may be presen and promptly notifies you and your team. It then provides detailed guidance on how to mitigate and address such issues.

This proactive approach to security empowers you to fortify your applications against potential threats and ensure the end-to-end robustness of your software.