Low-code and no-code with BESSER to create and deploy smart web applications

TL;DR

This paper introduces BESSER, an open-source low-code framework for creating and deploying smart web applications with AI, emphasizing transparency and extensibility.

Contribution

It presents BESSER, a novel open-source low-code platform that addresses vendor lock-in and extensibility issues in existing solutions.

Findings

BESSER enables designing, generating, and deploying web apps via a web-based editor.

The framework guarantees transparency and extensibility for users.

It offers an open-source alternative to commercial low-code platforms.

Abstract

The increasing demand for web applications containing AI-agents, seen as smart web applications, has prompted the need for new techniques to facilitate their creation. Low-code has risen as an approach that reduces the amount of handwritten code by focusing on the abstraction of components in the form of models combined with automated generators to produce applications. Existing low-code platforms are commercial, leading to drawbacks such as the risk of vendor lock-in, limited extensibility, and more. We present the open-source BESSER low-code framework, which allows users to design, generate and deploy their application via a freely accessible web-based editor, while guaranteeing transparency and extensibility.