BESSER version 1 released – Start “playing” with our open source low-code tool!

I’m really excited to announce the release of BESSER version 1. Calling a software tool “version 1” is always an arbitrary decision but I do believe that at this point BESSER has enough features to be useful. Not so much for end-users yet. But definitely for “Innovators” and researchers that are looking for a core platform that could be used to develop their own ideas without starting from scratch. Dare to try it?: https://github.com/BESSER-PEARL/BESSER

Lowcode features in this version

This version comes with four major improvements over our initial release (useful reading also as a reminder of the key principles behind BESSER):

1. You can now define OCL constraints as part of your model specification. We have integrated the OCL metamodel into B-UML (our pragmatic version of UML). And a grammar to enable you to write the constraints in plain text.
2. You can also create scenarios in the form of object diagrams. 
3. We have initial support for User Interface models so that you can also model your interface.
4. A REST API code generator to produce the RESTful service for Fast API framework.

And all this when the BESSER project is not even one year old. Thanks to all the team members for the hard work 👏👏👏.

Read the docs for more details on how to use these features. Or install BESSER and start playing!

Immediate roadmap

Our immediate focus is to improve the above features by:

• Adding an OCL interpreter so that you can validate the constraints by evaluating them on top of a number of scenarios created via our object diagram support
• Adding a generator for the UI models, we are looking at Flutter as a target to cover both web and mobile apps
• At the modeling level, we will also add support for state machines, as this is another key modeling perspective required in many projects. In fact, we already have state machine support as part of our bot development framework so it’s more of a matter to integrate that same support in BESSER.

Feel free to suggest additional items to the roadmap by opening an issue. Even better if you decide to implement your desired extension yourself. Contact us for guidance!

And remember that if you like BESSER there are many ways to help (beyond coding).