API Management

Understanding API Management

• What's an API?
• What is the transformation implied by using this architecture?
• Why do we need to manage and secure it?

Before API Oriented Architecture

One single deliverable : the application. It contains the presentation, the business logic and the data-access

Before API Oriented Architecture (2)

• Advantages of the monolith Architecture
  • Simple to deploy (one server, one deliverable)
  • Simple to maintain (maintenance can be made by only one developer)
• Disadvantages
  • Difficult to reuse in other applications
  • One change affects all the users
  • Interfaces are less reactive (usage of MVC)

API Oriented Architecture (2)

• Advantages of the API Oriented Architecture
  • Specialization is possible for front-end and backend
  • Reusability of APIs
  • Risk of failures are leveraged by the fact that APIs should be "small"
  • Less impact when updating one API
• Disadvantages
  • Difficult to enforce consistency between front-end and back-end
  • More difficult to deploy
  • More difficult to secure
  • Profusion of APIs (lack of urbanism)
  • Management of 3 teams instead of one (front/back/infrastructure)

API Management : Tools

To keep urbanism up to date, we need to integrate an API Manager

Advantages of API Manager

• it allows to have a single entry point to consume APIs
• it allows to manage versions and identify "locks" on APIs
• It adds a "gateway" layer to filter queries thanks to a list of rules

API Manager : tools

• APIMan (with keycloak embedded) : wildfly + apiman