  Context: Container orchestration tools supporting infrastructure-as-code
allow new forms of collaboration between developers and operatives. Still,
their text-based nature permits naive mistakes and is more difficult to read as
complexity increases. We can find few examples of low-code approaches for
defining the orchestration of containers, and there seems to be a lack of
empirical studies showing the benefits and limitations of such approaches. Goal
& method: We hypothesize that a complete visual notation for Docker-based
orchestrations could reduce the effort, the error rate, and the development
time. Therefore, we developed a tool featuring such a visual notation for
Docker Compose configurations, and we empirically evaluated it in a controlled
experiment with novice developers. Results: The results show a significant
reduction in development time and error-proneness when defining Docker Compose
files, supporting our hypothesis. The participants also thought the prototype
easier to use and useful, and wanted to use it in the future.
