API Management Maturity of Low-Code Development Platforms

Abstract

Low-code development platforms are environments that enable citizen developers without software engineering knowledge to create software products. These software products range from small business applications to large business platforms, around which software ecosystems increasingly form. In these software ecosystems, different organizations want to extend the created software products with services and software, with the goal of creating active enterprise networks that create value collaboratively. Well designed and maintained application programming interfaces are crucial for these organizations. In this paper we evaluate the application programming interface management maturity of four low-code development platforms. We show that these platform providers are not yet concerned with helping their customers build software ecosystems around the software platforms that citizen developers create. Furthermore, we identify the software engineering research challenges that these platform providers face. For instance, low-code development platforms should create abstractions that let citizen developers design, develop, and manage application programming interfaces. If low-code development platform providers follow our advice and act on it, they will become able to provide customers with complete ecosystem-enabled platforms instead of providing only simple throwaway business applications.