Key principles

Model-driven development (MDD) is a way of developing software applications through visual models rather than code. The model is a representation of the key functional artifacts of the software application; namely the data model, the business- and application logic, the user interfaces, and the integrations with other systems.

The key concepts of MDD are abstraction and automation. Through visual modeling of applications in terms closer to the business domain, MDD abstracts the complexity related to computer code. Further, the model is automatically interpreted by the platform, completely removing the need to generate and verify any code.

There are two significantly different approaches to no-code: code generation and model interpretation. Genus is a 100% model interpreting no-code platform that reads and executes the model directly. Thus, the visually developed model is the actual representation of the application, not an intermediary used to generate code. The model is the application.

Furthermore, there are no opportunities to inject code into our platform, as we believe that this is the only way to achieve sustainable software applications.

The no-code applications built with Genus are interpreted directly by the services in the Genus platform. These services (Genus Services) are based on a microservices architecture, utilizing industry-standard server-side technologies (Kubernetes, Docker, etc.). All microservices are stateless and dynamically scalable, both as multi-containers and multi-threads (scaling up and out).

The platform is built with enterprise application requirements in mind, focusing on security, scalability, performance, and maintainability. To reflect a modern approach to infrastructure, Genus Services can be run on all major public clouds as well as on-premises.

Genus also supports all major database systems (RDBMS) for the storage of customer data and application models (metadata). This provides flexibility for customers, as they can choose where and how to run their applications and store their data.

Your application’s data is stored in a database of your choice. Contrary to some other no-code platforms, Genus provides a clear separation of responsibility between the no-code platform and data storage, where the latter is a fully transparent relational database layer (RDBMS).

The data in the database is structured following industry-standard database normalization and can easily be accessed directly from the database. Furthermore, Genus enriches the functionality provided by the database server by adding additional layers of security, auditing, data validation, and data integrity controls.

The open approach to data storage and separation of responsibility provides additional advantages:

• It allows for advanced optimization of the database by database administrators and database professionals. Furthermore, it opens for external extract, transform, and load (ETL) tools to be used to optimize voluminous integrations.

• It enables reverse engineering of existing data models. Genus can be used on top of any supported relational database.

• It eliminates vendor lock-in. Genus enables customers to access the data directly in other tools or platforms. The data stored in the database can also be directly exported using standard mechanisms such as ETL tools or database migration tools.

We believe this principle of open and transparent data storage is important to support the variety of application scenarios that can be solved with Genus.