LowCode 2024

5th International Workshop on Modeling in Low-Code Development Platforms
At the MODELS conference, 23 September 2024, Linz, Austria

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The growing need for secure, trustworthy, and cost-efficient software as well as recent developments in cloud computing technologies, and the shortage of highly skilled professional software developers, have given rise to a new generation of low-code software development platforms, such as Google AppMaker (soon AppSheet) and Microsoft PowerApps. Low-code platforms enable the development and deployment of fully functional applications using mainly visual abstractions and interfaces and requiring little or no procedural code. This makes them accessible to an increasingly digital-native and tech-savvy workforce who can directly and effectively contribute to the software development process, even if they lack a programming background.

At the heart of low-code applications are typically models of the structure, the behaviour and the presentation of the application. Low-code application models need to be edited (using graphical and textual interfaces), validated, version-controlled and eventually transformed or interpreted to deliver user-facing applications.

As all of these activities have been of core interest to the MODELS community over the last two decades, a workshop on low-code software development at MODELS is a natural fit and an opportunity to bring together model-driven and low-code platform vendors, researchers and users, with substantial benefits to be reaped from all sides.

The objectives of the workshop are to:

  • bring together developers and users of low-code platforms with model-driven engineering researchers and practitioners;
  • explore the technologies that power contemporary low-code platforms;
  • identify the open challenges that vendors and users of low-code platforms face
  • identify solutions from the model-driven engineering community that could be ported/adapted in the context of low-code development

Topics of interest

Topics of interest to the workshop include:

  • Technologies underpinning low-code platforms
  • Comparisons of classical MDE tools and low-code platforms
  • Low-code development platforms as a service
  • Citizen/end-user software development
  • Recommender systems for low-code platforms
  • Graphical and textual cloud-based editors
  • Repositories of low-code development artefacs
  • Low-code platforms for data-driven applications
  • Low-code development for and from mobile devices
  • Interoperability issues between low-code platforms
  • Automation support in low-code platforms
  • Scalability in low-code development
  • Collaborative low-code development
  • Empirical studies on using low-code platforms

Submissions

Two kinds of papers are solicited: 1) Research papers should present novel research ideas (even if at a preliminary development stage), challenging problems, and practical contributions to the domain, 2) Industrial experience reports should describe the development or use of LCDPs in industrial settings. Both kinds of contributions can be submitted as regular papers (10 pp including references), and short papers (5 pp including references), adhering to the ACM style. All papers must be written in English and will follow a single-blind review process.

Formatting instructions are available at https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template for both LaTeX and Word users. LaTeX users must use the provided acmart.cls and ACM-Reference-Format.bst without modification, enable the conference format in the preamble of the document (i.e., \documentclass[sigconf,review]{acmart}), and use the ACM reference format for the bibliography (i.e., \bibliographystyle{ACM-Reference-Format}). The review option adds line numbers, thereby allowing referees to refer to specific lines in their comments.

Accepted papers will be included in the MODELS joint workshop proceedings, published by the ACM. The joint proceedings will include an opening message from the organizers, the workshop program committee, and all papers presented in the workshop.

Paper can be submitted via Easy Chair using the following link:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lowcode2024

Workshop program

09:00-09:10 Opening
09:10-09:30 Nathan Hagel, Nicolas Hili and Didier Schwab. Turning Low-Code Development Platforms into True No-Code with LLMs
09:30-09:50 Roy Kakkenberg, Satrio Adi Rukmono, Michel Chaudron, Wim Gerholt, Miguel Pinto and Claudio Ribeiro de Oliveira. Arvisan: an Interactive Tool for Visualisation and Analysis of Low-Code Architecture Landscapes
09:50-10:10 Anne-Kathrin Hermann, Lars König, Erik Burger and Ralf Reussner. Towards Integrating Low-Code in View-based Development
10:10-10:30 Discussion
10:30-11:00 Coffee Break
11:00-11:20 Gayane Sedrakyan, Maria-Eugenia Iacob and Jos Van Hillegersberg. Towards LowSecOps: Integrating Security Risk Management and Process-Oriented Recommendations in Low-Code Development
11:20-11:40 Jean-Marie Mottu and Gerson Sunyé. Emerging New Roles for Low-Code Software Development Platforms
11:40-12:00 Till Guthardt, Jens Kosiol and Oliver Hohlfeld. Low-code vs. the developer: An empirical study on the developer experience and efficiency of a no-code platform
12:00-12:30 Discussion
12:30-14:00 Lunch Break
14:00-14:20 Antonio Bucchiarone, Marco Panciera, Antonio Cicchetti, Nadia Mana, Carlotta Castelluccio and Lee Stott. PromptDeck: A No-Code Platform for Modular Prompt Engineering
14:20-14:40 Atefeh Nirumand Jazi, Iván Alfonso and Jordi Cabot. Low-Code Flutter Application Development Solution
14:40-15:30 Discussion and Closing

Important Dates

  • Deadline for submissions (updated): July 15, 2024
  • Notification of authors: Aug 7, 2024
  • Camera-ready deadline: Aug 16, 2024
  • Workshop date: Sep 23, 2024

Organisers

Program Committee

  • Ivan Alfonso
    (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia)
  • Alessandra Bagnato
    (Softeam, France)
  • Antonio Cicchetti
    (Maalardalen University, Sweden)
  • Federico Ciccozzi
    (Maalardalen University, Sweden)
  • Juri Di Rocco
    (University of L'Aquila, Italy)
  • Antonio Garcia-Dominguez
    (University of York, UK)
  • Sebastien Gerard
    (CEA LIST, France)
  • Hugo Lourenço
    (OutSystems, Portugal)
  • Pedro Molina
    (MetaDev, Spain)
  • Jean-Marie Mottu
    (University of Nantes, France)
  • Joost Noppen
    (BT Research and Innovation, UK)
  • Alfonso Pierantonio
    (University of L'Aquila, Italy)
  • Maria Teresa Rossi
    (University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy)
  • Matthias Tichy
    (University of Ulm, Germany)