Developing mobile apps has never been an easy task. Creating a mobile app for iOS means owning strong programming skills about Objective-C or Swift and knowing their APIs.

Android-based apps are not so different: you have to know Java and the Android platform and its API. The learning curve is not fast, and it includes how to create nice and interactive user interfaces, connecting embedded features like GPS and camera, showing maps, images, and so forth.

To make it more complex, it is pretty common to connect the app to a server where central data is saved or fetched and where other services must be connected, like a central database, documents repository, or other information systems.

Consequently, creating a mobile app requires a team of experts able to work with a variety of different technologies, including mobile app development, networking, server-side technologies, data integration tools.

An alternative solution to the availability of all these skills in-house or through a third party is choosing a unique tool which can fit all these requirements and reduce the complexity involved with mobile development.

Such a tool should replace the programming in a computer language with something more visual. To decrease the technical skills, the development should follow a model-driven approach, where the focus starts from a human-elaborated model which represents an abstract representation of the domain and through a forward engineering process, produce the application, in terms of user interface, events management, business logic, data storage.

There are several low-code programming tools available, but few can cover efficiently all the issues reported above, like the synchronization of data and documents with a central repository.

4WS.Platform is a low-code development tool used to quickly create multi-channel applications, including web and mobile applications, for iOS and Android mobile platforms. These mobile apps are native apps, the only way to ensure the maximum efficiency in terms of performance and the best integration with the local components of mobile devices.

The key feature of this platform is the creation of applications without the need for coding them with traditional tools, such as an IDE or other advanced editors. Apps can be configured graphically using the App Designer, a web application where the focus is on the application configuration instead of writing code.

No iOS or Android programmers are required if you have to create mobile apps, since these applications can be configured without any specific knowledge of these areas.

The main benefits of this solution are the reduced time-to-market and reduced costs involved with the creation of applications, since they can be realized without programmers, without technical knowledge, and without a need to be maintained.

4WS.Platform is released as software-as-a-service on the Google Cloud Infrastructure; it is easy to maintain, install, and includes all the features you need, in terms of security, base software, and hardware infrastructure and reliability.

Creating a list of products with an image preview or a list of customers and its detail with a Google map are features which can be realized in minutes, even by people who do not have any technical skill.

In this video, it is possible to see it in action, when creating a simple app from scratch!