The applications used in the present world are playing a massive role and have more impact on development, but when we talk about the development of those applications, the software part comes into the picture. Software developers or programmers are used to creating applications in software development, but the days of needing a programmer to create software are long gone. Technology has evolved with time and made the meticulous job of software development look like child's play. Even a non-technical developer and a developer with the least programming experience can develop a powerful application these days So, the key topic of discussion and the platform is known as no-code development, so let's look at the agenda of discussion.  

What is No-Code Development?

• No-Code is a development platform used for building applications even with non-technical users.  
• It uses a visual development interface for creating applications without requiring any coding experience.

Now that we know what no-code development is, let us look at why we use it --

There are a lot of reasons for no-code development. It can be helpful in many ways.  

• It is used to implement applications speedily compared to other coding platforms. It is easy to drag and drop the functionality of the application, and it allows developers to work efficiently without any risks. These are some of the reasons for using no-code development  

So, let's have a look at my first encounter with the no-code platform when I joined ProDT Consulting Services. The organisation focuses on digital transformation, and my role is a software developer on the WEM platform. This was my first encounter with WEM, a no-code platform.

WEM can be used in a variety of sectors. As a WEM developer, you don't need to write any logic code in any language; instead, you may utilize the WEM modeler feature to design a workflow for the powerful business application. Not only that, you don't have to rely on any language or UI/UX developer to build an application's UI/UX. Instead, utilize WEM's drag-and-drop functionality to construct an interface for your application.

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So, let's have a little discussion about what WEM is.

WEM is a powerful and all-around application which can integrate Flowchart, Data Model, UI Interface, Webservices Using these, we can make a fully functional, highly interactive application.  

In ProDT, I built one starter project using the no-code platform. The project is based on the "Online Shopping" website I have one week to complete the project. While working generally, I'm facing issues when working with multiple data model relationships. use a data model to create a relationship between tables.  

In Data Model, there are two types of lists:  

• List of databases
• Transient list  

Both lists are very useful as per the requirements.  

When I'm working with single-select or multi-select data fields, we have an ontology concept that comes in handy. In my project, I must maintain the status of multiple users; product status, category type, and gender. These are all single-select data fields, so the Ontology concept helps me a lot.  

Once I am done with the data model, I move to creating the flowchart. While creating the flowchart, it is divided into three categories, like Interaction, Operation, and Presets

I have created the interactions which show up on web pages, like adding, editing, deleting, and listing the data. Every Interaction Flowchart is linked to an Operation and Preset Flowchart in the projects' UI. In Operation Flowcharts, I have created operations like activating and deactivating the data.  

In Presets Flowcharts, I have created the getter, setter, flowchart, reset the fields, and cleared the fields.  

There are many widgets available in Wem modeller, such as text styling, and we have Div, Panel, Icon, Label, Adaptive Columns, and Table for creating layouts. Interactions include form, alert, button, required fields, data grid, repeater, script tags, rich text, and Tabbar. And we can also add custom widgets like bar charts, pie charts, multi-select, process steps, and many more.

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WEM allows you to consume and expose web services.

Consuming Web services: This gives you two options: from the web and from the file. Pick what applies. If we select from the web, we enter the URL and can load the services available file. The file contains a description of web services. If we select from a file, you have the option to upload the file to specify the web services in my project. I don't use consuming web services, so I don't have much knowledge about them.  

Exposing web services: The purpose of exposing the webservices is that we have options to expose the data to other systems. To expose the website or app, we must set up a web service that other systems can access. In my project, I have used this website to list all the products by entering the vendor's email id. I have created an operation that other systems can use to access the data functionality

For every operation, we need to specify the input and output fields. In my project, I used the post method.

• Created flowchart that takes care of processing input data as well as generating the output
• After that, I generated the URL link for testing in Postman.

Key Features of Low-Code and No-Code Development:

Drag and Drop Interfaces
Every low-code development platform and every no-code development platform has drag-and-drop capabilities that enable the development process.  

Security

The most important aspect of No-Code development is security. These development platforms offer a proper security system to protect the applications and the whole platform while building the applications.

Scalability

One of the major advantages of no-code development is that it provides scalability to handle and increase the application and business growth with a small team.

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Let's focus on the benefits of no code.

In my opinion, no code can reduce the time delivery, increase the workflows and applications, and enable non-technical users to create digital experiences. It provides quicker delivery, which means easier testing.

Conclusion

This blog on "My Experience with No-Code Development Platform" provides an overview of how important this is in application development. I have discussed some of the key features of the WEM no-code platform. So, this was my experience with the no-code platform.

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