am new to API LM & confused about Building APIs using tools such as apigee, 3scale, mashery, mulesoft, TIBCO APIX etc
all these years , I know API is all about a language's API or SDK which you use to write/build code/application to solve a business problem. Say Java API or J2EE API etc
Do I have to build my own dataservice using my application/system and expose it as a service (WS/REST) and use the above tools (apigee, 3scale, mashery, mulesoft ec) or does these tools allow a developer to Build APIs from the scratch?
In other words, do I create your own application within your enterprise (be it Java based, DB or a .Net service or a Web App hosted on weblogic) and expose it as API for B2D or DX (with auth, analytics, portal, developer access) which is called as "build an API"?
When using Apigee Edge, you must expose your backend as an http/https endpoint first. Then, you can add security, caching, quota, and many other features to your API facade. When using the Apigee-127 product, you can create an entire backend using Node.js locally and then deploy it to run in the cloud.
Related
I´m interested in using the store and the developer portal. In some cases I want to integrate third-party gateway like kong.
The documentation from WSO2 API Manager 2.x says:
- Components usable separately: developer portal can be used to catalog
APIs deployed in third-party gateways
(https://wso2.com/api-management/features/)
Do you have more information about that feature and how to configure it?
Technical this is feasible but requires some work. I've found that someone did it with Intel Expressway Service Gateway.
You would need to implement a custom handler in WSO2 and connect it with Kong. But as the features might differ, the UI may not perfectly fit.
Besides than offering extension points, WSO2 has no real interest in supporting this as the API Gateway is the core component and all of their business models are based on it.
enter image description here
Do they each have a specific purpose? Is one better suited than the other for a particular task?
They are two different distributions and serve different purposes.
API Gateway- It has specific features to communicate to Anypoint Platform to manage APIs, apply runtime policies, send analytics, track APIs.
Task- For deploying your proxy API Application
Mule Server- Mule server is the runtime you use for your integrations.
Task- For deploying your actual implementation API Application
Since Mule runtime version v3.8.0, both are one and the same. This means that since that version, the runtime is shipped with API Gateway capabilities, and there is no more API Gateway specific distributions released. To enable API Gateway capabilities, if you have the correct entitlement, you only need to specify your organization credentials or environment credentials (this last, it is only applicable to Mule 4 or newer).
API Gateway capabilities are the only ones who "know" how to apply/un-apply Anypoint Policies and generate Analytics info, among other things.
For runtimes released before v3.8.0, the only way to leverage those capabilities was to use API Gateway distribution. For example, API Gateway v2.x is based on Mule runtime v3.7.x.
I have a query on a design hope you guys can clarify my doubt.
I have a specific requirement in which Mule is used just to expose the back end services in API gateway, backend services are written in Spring boot and other technology, all these services needs to be exposed in API gateway.
Is this a good practice to do that and if yes how can we do that?
I saw that in API manager we can create proxy layer on top of the services developed in Mule but is it possible to create proxies for the services developed in different technologies?
Absolutely ... For creating proxy service, it doesn't matter what type of technology does the backend service have.
It can create a proxy layer for any kind of backend service available either locally, in cloud or other remote location till the service url is accessible.
This proxy will create an additional layer hiding the actual url to the external world.
it doesn't matter what technology you are using for development as long as those are REST services and accessible to the cloudhub application. You can deploy those on-premise and can integrate your local runtime with cloudhub. Also, mule supports spring projects and you can directly configure your spring project/details inside mule.
I am experimenting with Mule API management these days. What I come to know is we can deploy our API to one of these:
A Mule Runtime
An API Gateway
In the documentation, it is said that we should go with option 1 when we want to separate out the implementation of your API from the orchestration. What does it mean?
Can any one please explain in detail?
Policy management from API Platform and analytics generation can be achieved only by using a correctly configured API Gateway, which is a superset of Mule EE (current version is API Gateway 2.1.0 which contains Mule EE 3.7.2).
Depending on your architecture you may have different solutions.
For example:
Proxy running on API Gateway, implementation API running somewhere
else (eg. Mule EE/CE, Tomcat, cobol server, etc)
Proxy and implementation API running on the same API Gateway
Implementation API
managed directly from API Platform without using the autogenerated
proxies.
HTH :-)
Not exactly sure what they mean there, because on this page: https://developer.mulesoft.com/docs/display/current/API+Gateway they also mention this:
Note that the API Gateway, because it acts as an orchestration layer
for services and APIs implemented elsewhere, is technology-agnostic.
You can proxy non-Mule services or APIs of any kind, as long as they
expose HTTP/HTTPS, VM, Jetty, or APIkit Router endpoints. You can also
proxy APIs that you design and build with API Designer and APIkit to
the API Gateway to separate the orchestration from the implementation
of those APIs.
So both methods technically allow you to separate API from orchestration, as your API gateway application could simply proxy another Mule application elsewhere that performs the orchestration. But my understanding of the two options are:
The API gateway is a limited offering that allows you to use a subset of Mule's connectors, transports and modules such as ApiKit and HTTP, it allows you to expose and API then use http to connect to whatever backend systems you want as a proxy and perform the orchestration in the API layer.
By using the Mule runtime operation, it gives you much more flexibility and allows you to compose as many applications as you want using the full range of connectors etc. and separate out the different aspects of your applications into as many layers as you want as separately deployable entities that you can deploy to on-premise standalone instances or Cloudhub etc.
#Ryan answer is more or less on the mark, however if you do choose the Mule ESB offering you will loose out on the API Management and governance functionality that API gateway provides OOTB.
These include
Lets you enforce runtime policies and collect data for analytics
Applies policies to APIs or endpoints around security, throttling,
rate limiting, and more
Extends PingFederate to serve as identity management and OAuth
provider for your APIs
Lets you require or restrict certain behaviors in a few simple steps
Lets you add or remove policies at runtime with no API downtime
Manages access to your API by issuing contract keys
Monitors the API to confirm it is meeting all contract terms
Ensures compliance with service level agreements (SLAs)
In my opinion go with API Gateway/Manager if your API will be consumed my third party developers with whom you might not have too many interactions (think public API's) else Mule ESB should be good.
You should be able to migrate from Mule ESB to API Manager (and vice versa) also easily if you need to, so I do not think you will get locked into your decision
PS: Content copied from here
I want to build a new mobile app backend. This backend might eventually support other types of clients such as desktop or traditional web application.
In the past for multi client applications I would use this stack of technologies. SQL Server -> Entity Framework -> TCP WCF Service Endpoint -> MVC Web Application or WPF Windows Application
I know I want my mobile client to be consuming a Restful Http Web API like the types you would host in the new Azure API product. But I'm not sure if I should still do the WCF layer or not.
Couldn't all my clients consume just the Web API now? Or would it still be wise to develop the WCF service and the layer Web API on top of that?
It just doesn't seem right to be using 2 different serialization technologies at the same time.
Yes, you could replace that with Web API and create a REST API but as Tim already mentioned on his comment, that is obviously just HTTP and not all the protocols WCF supports.
Having said that, API Apps have Swagger metadata to describe what the REST URIs (endpoints) can do (e.g. methods, content types, descriptions etc.). There are a lot of Swagger SDK generators which can read the Swagger metadata and generate the code you need to consume the REST API in your application for pretty much any language out there. For Visual Studio 2013 with the latest Azure SDK, you have this capability built in as well. This is pure code generation, no tight coupling or anything, we just generate the code you were supposed to write to consume the API.