Downsides of Mendix?

2
Are there any downsides of Mendix? by that I mean where it is not a best candidate for usage? The reason, I am asking this question is not that I don't believe in what it offers, rather I am also interested in knowing where not to use this. Possibly, this could also be answered by underlining it's shortcomings or some envisaged features in progress or in queue that are in it's developer's opinion are must have to take Mendix to it's next level?
asked
4 answers
6

Current pitfalls of choosing for MX:

  • Lack of developers with experience (even though MX believes you don't need to be a developer)
  • Ability to make a fast-growing app without suffering the consequences until it is too late; Mendix shields you from some of the development you have to do in traditional environments but that also means that you could make mistakes that the platform can't help you with. For example not using the proper access rules on entities to prevent user roles from viewing certain data. You might think you have it covered with that xpath you use on the datagrid but a user can still access all data via the Javascript client API if you haven't added the limitation on the entity. And there are other examples too.
  • Single database, when processing a lot of data you must really be aware of your datamodel, data processing, etc not to break your application because your database can't handle it anymore.
  • Single app is not useful for all public accessible pages, it doesn't give proper updates in the users address bar and it doesn't give an easy method for indexing by search engine bots.

There is more but overall I'm very happy with MX :)

answered
8

The only current downside I can think of is that the gap between the free version and the payed version is too big in my opinion. I would like to have an in-between license for small companies (ie less than 5 people).

Regards,

Ronald

answered
1

My personal downsides of Mendix(cloud) system

When your application is deployed to a Mendix node:

  • Impossible to view/alter database (only possible to view/alter LOCAL-database trough database-viewer, or creating views for all the tables)
  • Impossible to view/alter the filesystem (only trough your self-made screens of all the filetype objects, or "scrambled" in backup-download)

I think viewing the database and filesystem are the basics of administrating your application on a node, the mendix-cloud nodes are lacking these functions.

answered
0

Good point Ronald! Since Mendix has endless possibilities to extend it with widgets, integration points, etc. , there is virtually no limit. But when you are in need of very specific applications like for instance SPSS, I do not think you should try to build your own. I would advise to keep up with the latest version of the Mendix Modeler as much as possible as well, before it eruqires a major rework job to remove all the tings that are deprecated.

answered