IDE Studio Pro

This is the Mendix developer continuum:

How Does Mendix Support Different Developer Profiles?

The Mendix platform is designed for a variety of app developers, from business-oriented developers without any software development skills to very experienced technical developers with extensive software development and programming experience.

Developers with a technical programming background (for example, JavaScript, Java, or .NET) can use Mendix Studio Pro along with CSS, Java, and JavaScript to build, customize, and extend a Mendix app.

Business Engineers visually build mobile apps, web apps, and microservices using visual workflow, page, and logic editors. These are combined with integrations based on REST, OData, and web services as well as custom ODE integrations.

Business Experts and Citizen Developerscan directly use Mendix Studio Pro to visually build, review, and collaborate on an application. Mendix Studio Pro provides the tools to contribute to app development, regardless of the user’s programming experience or background. Getting started takes only a few minutes. If more advanced app features need to be added, users can do this in Studio Pro themselves or collaborate with a professional developer in the team to support them in adding these advanced features.

How Can I Work with My Team Members on the Same App?

Developers using Mendix Studio Pro can work together on the same app model via the Mendix Team Server version control repository based on Git. Changes from team members shared via integrated commit and pull functionality on the Team Server.

To learn more about version control and multi-user development in Mendix, see Version Control Management.

How Does Mendix Enable Business Experts to Become Developers?

Mendix Studio Pro enables people in the business—like tech-savvy Business Experts and Citizen Developers with minimal coding or software development experience—to create engaging web and mobile applications without having to know how to code. With Mendix Studio Pro’s visual drag-and-drop interface for design, data, and logic, collaborative software development becomes accessible to a variety of developers who do not sit in IT.

These users add value in three ways using Mendix Studio Pro:

• They help to bridge the requirements gap by building functional app prototypes that serve to validate ideas with business stakeholders. This happens before professional developer teams are involved to complete the application.
• They contribute lightweight changes to existing apps (for example, operating as app users improving the user interface themselves). This saves professional developers a lot of time while ensuring the right business outcomes.
• They build simple business applications from start to finish themselves. Some processes are vastly improved by a simple web app, built by the person who best knows the process.

Business experts and citizen developers use Mendix Studio Pro to do the following:

• Create workflows to automate and optimize their business processes
• Develop application user interfaces with styled building blocks and widgets
• Create domain models for reading and writing data in an application
• Visually model the interactions and flow control of an application
• Leverage an enterprise design language to create engaging apps that conform to company standards beyond branding and theming
• Foster collaboration and alignment with stakeholders in business and IT via a visual what-you-see-is-what-you-get environment, which is a key element of iterative software development

In short, Mendix Studio Pro empowers these users to solve problems collaboratively, creatively, and quickly, maximizing the productivity of your organization and gaining higher end-user adoption.

How Does Mendix Enable Model-Driven Development?

Mendix enables model-driven development through Mendix Studio Pro, which provides visual drag-and-drop development tools for workflows, UI, data, logic, and navigation using no-code and low-code development. By interpreting the resulting model at runtime and thus maintaining the bond between model and application, Mendix prevents the production of tomorrow’s legacy. Furthermore, direct model execution removes code generation overhead and provides significant advantages by accommodating live changes and consistency checks, controlled extensions, and dynamic monitoring analysis at runtime. 

Model-driven development (MDD) has emerged as one of the leading approaches for enabling rapid application development. Because it uses visual models for defining application logic, process flows, and user interfaces, MDD empowers both developers and business users to rapidly build applications without the need for labor-intensive low-level coding. Consequently, it is significantly faster than traditional programming languages like C# and Java. In order to involve business users in the design and development of applications to a level where they can actively participate, we have fully adopted a visual MDD approach. MDD provides an excellent communication mechanism to align business and IT stakeholders, thereby ensuring greater quality and more successful outcomes. 

Another benefit is the fact that the Mendix Runtime directly executes models, which means that the model is literally the application, not an intermediary. As opposed to approaches where a visually-modeled design would actually generate code (for example, Java or .NET), Mendix’s model interpretation approach has a number of unique characteristics and advantages. 

For more information, see the the Low-Code Principle #1: Model-Driven Development, the Most Important Concept in Low-Code

• What Can I Do with Mendix Studio Pro?

  Studio Pro is Mendix’s comprehensive low-code application development environment that allows cross-functional teams to turn ideas into production applications. A range of developers—from the seriously experienced to those with little previous exposure to coding—can build applications from the ground up by adding complex logic and building sophisticated integrations to create enterprise-grade, transactional web and mobile applications.

  Mendix Studio Pro is designed for building applications from start to finish while harnessing the power of collaborative software development. Users of Mendix Studio Pro benefit from a wide set of functionality. The IDE consists of an extensive set of domain-specific languages and associated modeling tools, including the domain model, workflow editor, page editor, microflow editor, integrations, debugger, and security configuration. What is more, you are able to build extensions, add integration to underlying systems, manage branch lines, and manage security, all within Mendix Studio Pro.

• How Can I Work Offline?

  Mendix Studio Pro has a Work offline mode in which you can continue modeling, running, and testing the app locally without an internet connection. In this mode, all the changes are still stored in the local version repository. When you want to share the changes made with the rest of your app development team, you can go online again and commit to the Team Server version control repository.

  While working offline, online services like the Mendix Marketplace, Team Server, and and app project stories in the Mendix Portal are temporarily disabled.

• How Can I Deploy & Test Locally?

  Rapid development requires developers to test changes quickly, particularly where UX/UI is concerned. To achieve this, the Mendix Platform provides one-click deployment to the user’s local machine. Local deployment works out of the box, no additional installation or configuration required. When deploying locally, a fully functional local working instance of the application with its own local SQL database is started.

  The Instant Update feature in Mendix Studio Pro provides the fastest way to quickly iterate on changes made in an app project. Only the changed parts of the app are pushed and updated to the locally running app, so you can directly test your change in the live app.

  You can even test changes locally without the need for an internet connection using http://localhost:{dynamic variable port}.

• Which Operating Systems Does Mendix Studio Pro Support?

  Mendix Studio Pro can run on both Windows and macOS natively.