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Mendix 9 – top 10 features
Mendix 9 is now released and comes with lots of amazing new features to make Mendix Makers more productive. With the general release of Mendix 9, the bar for application development is raised again – spiking productivity even more than before!
I am Mohammed Siddiqui, a Mendix Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and certified Mendix Expert working at AuraQ as a Principal Business Engineer / Architect. In this blog, I’m sharing and counting down my personal top 10 features that are released in Mendix 9:
10. Native Dependency Management
Do you develop native mobile apps and find it difficult to add and manage react native dependencies within your Mendix project? Well, in Mendix 9 it is now simpler to add additional react native modules within your native mobile apps. More Details.
9. While Looping
Do you have a requirement of while loop within your Mendix project and previously had to do a work around in a microflow by creating placeholder lists to execute repeatable actions? Good news, you do not need to do this work around anymore because Mendix 9 comes with conditional looping called While. More Details.
8. Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
Got a requirement to build offline-first, mobile application using native mobile device capabilities without needing to be published on any intermediary app store? Mendix 9 has got you covered! There is a new navigation profile now available called PWA, this will allow you to quickly build an offline-first PWA and make use of necessary offline features that are supported by web browsers. More Details.
7. Power to the Text
A very common use case is where you use text templates in a page but they should be displayed based on a condition – to fulfil this requirement many of us use conditional visibility. Good news, Mendix has made it easier for us! In Mendix 9, expressions can be used as text template parameters. Yes, that is true. You can use if-then-else, functions, the context of parent data views, as well as retrieve over associations. More Details.
6. New Atlas UI Folder Structure
Many of us build reusable module(s) and with that want to have module specific page layouts and custom UI. There are several work arounds, but some of us create a widget that just includes styles (CSS) which go with the module to support custom UI. No more work arounds from Mendix 9 onwards. With Mendix 9, Atlas UI 3.0 is released. A new folder structure is also introduced that simplifies how a theme is updated and extended. It allows you to create and share modules that include specific layouts and templates. You can define native and web styles, styling resources, and design properties for each module. Additionally, the other great news is that you don’t need to use external tools like Calypso to compile Sass because Mendix takes care of compiling Sass when needed from Studio Pro 9.0.0 onwards. There are many new theme features released with Mendix 9! More Details.
5. MxAssist Performance Bot
Performance is an area of concern for any application and things can go wrong if you do not follow Mendix development best practices. Sometimes you can easily miss things, especially if you are new to Mendix and worried about introducing performance issues. Do not worry anymore, MxAssist Performance Bot is released with Mendix 9 and acts as an intelligent virtual co-developer bot. This bot inspects your model against Mendix development best practices to help improve the performance of your application. More Details.
4. List Filtering by Expression
Before Mendix 9, filtering/finding by expression was not supported in a List operation activity. To perform this, you had to use loop or multiple list operations. With Mendix 9, list operation activity is extended further, filter/find by expression are added making your life much easier. More Details.
3. New Merge Algorithm
Conflict resolution in app model was not fine-grained before Mendix 9. For example, if there are conflicting changes in a document then you had to either choose your changes or other developer changes that applied to the whole document. With Mendix 9, new merge algorithm is enabled to combine changes in the app model when performing an update or a merge. You can resolve conflicts by picking changes of individual parts and you do not need to replace the whole document. The new merge algorithm allows fine-grained conflict resolution and ability to make parallel changes to a list of widgets. More Details.
2. Task Queue
Almost all of us have used the Queue module from Mendix Marketplace to fulfil requirements of running long microflows in the background and parallel processing, most of the time it is used to improve performance of the application where applicable. With Mendix 9 there is no need to use Queue marketplace module anymore. From Studio Pro 9.0.0 onwards, Task Queue is available as a horizontally scalable solution to execute microflows in the background. More Details.
AND FINALLY….
1. Workflow Editor
Workflow is one of the biggest enhancements and personally, my favorite new feature of Mendix 9. Every other project has requirements for some sort of case management or workflow logic. Traditionally, to implement these workflow requirements you had to develop lots of microflows and UI screens which was not only time consuming but also could become very complex. Well, with the Mendix 9 release a new visual workflow editor is available in Mendix Studio and Studio Pro as a beta feature. More Details.
That’s my Top 10 but I could go on…there is much more to Mendix 9 and below are some special features that didn’t make my list but worth also noting to improve your productivity:
- Nanoflow debugging: you can now debug nanoflows using nanoflow debugger for all apps (web, native, and PWA).
- Data grid 2.0: a new module called Data grid 2.0 is available on Mendix marketplace which is very flexible and powerful.
- Copy and paste multiple entities and annotations: you can copy and paste several entities and annotation in the domain model.
For more new features and exciting product announcements, be sure to register for Mendix World 2021- one of the biggest low-code events of the year!
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