Using Mendix as frontend and working with databases

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Hi Mendix community, I am new to Mendix and I am really impressed how easy and fast one can create an application. At the moment I am thinking about use cases, but a few questions are popping up in my mind. Maybe you can help me to develop a better understanding of the new tool and its capabilities.   I am thinking about to use Mendix as a frontend application for a MSQL database. The problem is that the existing database is used to serve as a database source for many other applications, so the migration to Mendix would be difficult. My question is whether it make sense to use Mendix as a frontend application because from my understanding the main adavantages (easy to use, fast development) results from its “all in one solution”? If Mendix is a suitable to for this task, how would it be implemented? Do I just replicate the data model from my MSQL server and thus Mendix knows how to deal with the data on the existing SQL server? Or do I build a copy of my database in Mendix and build a daily synchronization of the Mendix managed database to the SQL server? Looking forward to your answers. Thanks in advance! Sai
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There could be several approaches to your case. Here I will outline one of them. Whether it is the best one, I’m not sure.

First, a Mendix app always requires access to its own dedicated database. It uses this database to store (system) user accounts and other persistent entities.

Ideally, you should consume the data in your MSSQL database via a rest API that “owns” the data; effectively making the data accessible via a well-defined service. I suppose you have considered that architecture.

Since you have asked whether the Mendix app can consume the data from existing MSSQL, yes it can. You can use https://docs.mendix.com/appstore/connectors/database-connector to create bridges into your existing data model. It will be higher maintenance in the long run because Mendix doesn’t manage that database model, therefore you have to do it manually. Also, the initial mapping/querying is a manual task.

 

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Thank your for your reply!

That means it is possible to build an front end without having an appropriate domain model in Mendix?

Does the interface elements in Mendix knows how to deal with SQL commands?

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