AI-powered development in action with Mendix
The technology behind artificial intelligence (AI) requires specialized resources to build and implement. That’s why many organizations are still in the experimental phase with AI. With Mendix 10.6, we were also experimenting with AI.
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As Mendix Studio Pro moves toward version 10.12, you can see that these experiments are becoming a reality.
Our goals with AI are the same as our commitment to you over the past nearly 20 years: to help you streamline development and accelerate project timelines. We’ll do this through AI-assisted development, as well as by making it easier for you to create AI-enhanced applications.
How does AI-assisted development differ from traditional software development?
AI-assisted development is the use of machine learning to assist developers by providing real-time recommendations and applying best practices throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC).
AI has the ability to provide guidance, assistance, and support throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC).
AI provides guidance by allowing developers to ask questions related to IDE development. In turn, the IDE provides immediate and insightful answers, along with access to the sources used to generate those answers.
AI can help provide real-time recommendations and apply best practices when creating logic or automating corrective tasks that typically slow down developers using traditional development methods.
A key difference between AI-assisted development and traditional development is the use of generative AI. Generative AI can accelerate the development process and improve consistency and quality by:
- Developing front-end and back-end logic
- Creating application components
- Automate tasks such as creating SQL commands and test data, for example
What features does Mendix offer for AI-assisted development?
The work we've done with AI provides you and your development teams with more guidance on software development.
That said, we’d like to introduce you to Maia, Mendix’s AI assistant. Maia is our suite of AI-powered development tools built into the Mendix Studio Pro IDE.
The services available on Maia enable you to achieve the speed needed to deliver solutions and start generating value faster. They also provide a way to achieve higher quality right from the start. The tools available on Maia are all about intelligent guidance, assistance, and generation
Maia Chat
Our previous chatbot, Mendix Chat, has now been integrated into Maia and is now known as Maia Chat. Maia Chat provides immediate and detailed answers to questions related to Mendix and is powered by Generative AI.
We see Maia Chat helping new Mendix users get up to speed more quickly and helping those with Mendix experience get answers faster.
Other updates to Maia's chat feature include a 40% faster response time, copy/paste shortcuts, and improved readability.
The improvements we’ve made to Maia Chat are essential for helping your developers build faster, which means getting solutions into production more quickly and creating value as fast as you need it.
AI-powered development: Maia Recommendations
The Maia platform also includes several recommendation tools. These tools provide real-time, context-driven next steps and best practices to help you complete your build faster.
If you've used Mendix 10, you've seen this before with our Logic Bots and Best Practice Bots. They are now known as Maia Logic and Maia Best Practice Recommenders.
The Logic Recommender provides real-time, context-driven suggestions for the most relevant next steps when creating microflows and nanoflows. New in version 10.12 is the Workflow Recommender. The Workflow Recommender is similar to the Logic Recommender in terms of UI, but it suggests user tasks and workflow elements (such as timer events, decisions, and splits, to name a few), which in turn suggests logic for business processes.
AI-powered development: Maia Recommendations
The Maia platform also includes several recommendation tools. These tools provide real-time, context-driven next steps and best practices to help you complete your build faster.
If you've used Mendix 10, you've seen this before with our Logic Bots and Best Practice Bots. They are now known as Maia Logic and Maia Best Practice Recommenders.
The Logic Recommender provides real-time, context-driven suggestions for the most relevant next steps when creating microflows and nanoflows. New in version 10.12 is the Workflow Recommender. The Workflow Recommender is similar to the Logic Recommender in terms of UI, but it suggests user tasks and workflow elements (such as timer events, decisions, and splits, to name a few), which in turn suggests logic for business processes.
Conversational user interface
The customer experience is everything. That’s why building chatbots and other conversational experiences should be a top priority for most companies.
With Conversational UI, you get reusable components that make it easier to create these types of experiences, whether it’s a standalone chatbot or a conversational experience integrated into your Mendix app.
Depending on your preference, you can use the OpenAI or Amazon Bedrock connector templates and leverage your own data through Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Both connectors have been updated to be compatible with the Conversational UI.
Early AI applications
Want to build an enterprise-grade ChatGPT-style solution, but need it to be private? We have just what you need with our AI Bot Starter Application. With it, you can build a bot in minutes that will give your users
- Anyone up for a brainstorming session?
- A copywriter to draft emails and social media posts
- An assistant that can summarize large amounts of text
- A tool that can analyze PDF documents
- A developer who can help with logic puzzles
This bot is compatible with Azure OpenAI and Amazon Bedrock and allows you to connect it to your data sources in a RAG configuration.
We are also providing a blank GenAI starter app that helps you quickly get started on your own custom GenAI project.
AI and low-code go hand in hand
When it comes to any new technology, we want to see how we can use it to help you, our valued customers. We also want to see how we can help you make the most of it.
We will continue to develop and refine our offerings in the areas of AI-assisted development and AI-enhanced applications to ensure that you can deliver value as quickly as possible.
Keep exploring
📚 Want to learn more?
Check out our Complete Guide to Low-Code for a comprehensive overview of the topic.
🔗 External Reference: For more information, visit the official Mendix website.
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