1. AI-powered software development
AI-powered software development takes on tasks like code creation, testing, and debugging. AI agents and digital workers allow developers to concentrate on higher-level work that requires creativity and critical thinking, solves complex problems, and creates impactful solutions. This shift addresses the ongoing talent shortage, increases productivity, and enriches the development process.
With Mentor, OutSystems enables developers to leverage GenAI to create full-stack applications from natural language. Developers can simply describe the app they need in a prompt or provide high-level requirements in a document. Mentor then interprets this information to generate the initial app structure, data models, business logic, and user interface. Moving quickly from concept to working prototype saves time and supports early alignment with business goals, giving developers a head start on refinement and customization.
Mentor accelerates the traditionally slow cycles of manual app iteration by providing suggestions, ranging from data to UI, for refining or modifying apps in real-time without errors or frequent publishing. Developers receive instant feedback on changes based on context, whether it's adding new data elements, roles, or screens.
By leveraging advanced GenAI models, Mentor provides targeted, best-practice recommendations that ensure code quality and compliance—all while maintaining high standards of accuracy, security, and performance.
Integrated into the OuSystems IDE, Mentor understands the development context and the developer's actions and offers precise and relevant suggestions. Its guidance and support accelerate the work of both novice and experienced OutSystems users, thereby enabling them to experience seamless and productive development. As a result, new users grasp the platform's intricacies more efficiently, experienced developers save time, and all developers overcome challenges and avoid getting stuck.
In addition, Mentor includes Natural Language Data Manipulation, so that users can write and comprehend data manipulation queries using plain English, not SQL or a proprietary language. Users describe the desired data and outcomes, and Mentor intelligently interprets their needs. The system then aggregates the relevant data, enhancing usability and accessibility.
In OutSystems, development is model-driven. Visual cues provide developers with concrete examples, ideas, and inspiration so that they have a clearer understanding of the possibilities.
Moreover, developers can become curators of the suggestions, thanks to the higher level of abstraction afforded by the visual model and the patterns they create. These patterns are anonymized so that OutSystems can use them to optimize the AI so that it only provides the safest recommendations that adhere to best practices and align with industry standards and guidelines.
AI-powered software development lifecycle management
Managing the SDLC often requires addressing fragmented workflows, technical debt, and evolving security and regulatory standards while keeping pace with business demands and release timelines. Mentor ensures that quality and compliance are built into the SDLC management process from the start, delivering AI-powered insights and automation early to proactively prevent issues from reaching production.
OutSystems relies on AI and Mentor to enforce adherence to architectural best practices and identify issues early. Mentor enables teams to streamline application maintenance and focus on delivering value. With built-in capabilities for continuous monitoring, performance optimization, and compliance and Mentor as a digital guide, businesses deploy high-quality applications that align with business goals.
Mentor is designed to help your teams address architectural shortcomings effectively, optimize modularity, and achieve greater deployment agility. With Mentor, the analysis of your software architecture is automated. It meticulously examines code structure, identifies reusable components, and provides users with a comprehensive overview, highlighting inconsistencies and areas with opportunities for improvement. It also helps teams find and delete unused apps and libraries created for testing purposes to reduce clutter and maintain performance.
Mentor code review is automated, providing users with detailed code analysis based on evaluation against a set of best practices and code patterns. It generates a detailed report highlighting your application's quality issues and offers recommendations for resolving them.
When it comes to maintainability, guided refactoring is a key capability offered by Mentor. Consider a scenario where multiple development teams are distributed across different countries, each building their own applications, and probably duplicating code. Accumulating duplicated code is likely to create issues and technical debt over time. Also, fixing the code in one instance while overlooking similar occurrences in others can create inconsistency and vulnerability to hackers. And this is where Mentor comes into play.
It thoroughly scans the codebase, identifying instances of repetition, flagging areas for improvement, and highlighting potential opportunities for refactoring. It then guides developers through the refactoring process. Through automated refactoring, OutSystems ensures the long-term maintainability of the applications, significantly reducing technical debt and enhancing software quality.
Mentor uses AI to identify opportunities for enhancing application 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, Mentor quickly identifies it and offers solutions for optimization. It also shows developers how to make changes that improve the application's speed and performance while maintaining the desired functionality. It may also suggest how to simplify complex code structures, eliminate nested loops, or consolidate multiple queries into one. By following Mentor’s recommendations, developers gain valuable insights into areas where performance improves without ever sacrificing functionality.
Mentor addresses one of the most critical concerns in the software development landscape—security. It provides multiple lines of defense for safeguarding applications you’ve developed, using AI to thoroughly examine and scrutinize them for potential security vulnerabilities. If it detects where security weaknesses may be present, it promptly notifies your team and offers guidance for mitigating and addressing them. This proactive approach to security empowers you to fortify your applications against potential threats and ensure the end-to-end robustness of your software.