Building BESSER: an open-source low-code platform

TL;DR

BESSER is an open-source low-code platform designed to facilitate the development of complex and smart software systems through multiple modeling notations and community-driven extensions.

Contribution

This paper introduces BESSER, a novel open-source low-code platform that supports diverse modeling notations and community contributions for developing smart software.

Findings

Supports multiple modeling notations including UML and chatbots

Enables community contributions and extensions

Facilitates development of complex and smart software systems

Abstract

Low-code platforms (latest reincarnation of the long tradition of model-driven engineering approaches) have the potential of saving us countless hours of repetitive boilerplate coding tasks. However, as software systems grow in complexity, low-code platforms need to adapt as well. Notably, nowadays this implies adapting to the modeling and generation of smart software. At the same time, if we want to broaden the userbase of this type of tools, we should also be able to provide more open source alternatives that help potential users avoid vendor lock-ins and give them the freedom to explore low-code development approaches (even adapting the tool to better fit their needs). To fulfil these needs, we are building BESSER, an open source low-code platform for developing (smart) software. BESSER offers various forms (i.e., notations) for system and domain specification (e.g. UML for technical users and chatbots for business users) together with a number of generators. Both types of components can be extended and are open to contributions from the community.