Error handling ensures that problems encountered during API integration are handled appropriately and appropriate actions are taken to notify users or downstream systems of the errors encountered. Resilience, on the other hand, refers to the ability of a system to recover from errors and continue to function reliably. While rate limiting and throttling are necessary for maintaining a stable API ecosystem, exceeding these usage limits can have various challenges and consequences. When rate limits are exceeded, API requests can be denied or delayed, resulting in a degraded user experience.
McDonald’s is saving costs on delivery and expanding its service reach by partnering with Uber Eats. Stripe ensured fast adoption and rapid profitability by building a developer-first product with solid API documentation. Slack has gained market dominance as a team communication app by integrating with literally every other workplace product. When standardized, internal APIs can speed up the development lifecycle for a variety of business apps or augment their existing capabilities.
Discover Value Scenarios Well Beyond Your Current Business Horizon by Mixing Your APIs With APIs From Another Vertical
Coca-Cola’s API journey began several years ago, when Routh was CIO for North America and she and her team put in place a modern marketing technology platform. They moved all of their applications onto the public cloud and based their marketing technology platforms on software-as-a-service solutions. Routh’s team then built an API conceptual layer across the marketing and technology stack, facilitating a move from a monolithic to a modern platform. Next, they decomposed and decoupled the platform into a set of easily consumable microservices and made them available to the thousands of marketing agencies with which they work.
You need to test your API security and authentication mechanisms before and after deployment to ensure that they are robust, effective, and compliant. You need to test if your API uses secure protocols, such as HTTPS, SSL, or TLS, to encrypt the data in transit. You also need to test if your API uses proper authentication methods, such as OAuth, JWT, or API keys, to verify the identity and permissions of the users and clients. You can use tools such as OWASP ZAP, Nmap, Burp Suite, or Postman to test your API security and authentication.
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It is also important to ensure this POC phase is clearly communicated with all stakeholders and players in Step 4, including defined expectations of what will—and will not, be accomplished during this trial run. You don’t want to increase your headwinds because the results were misaligned with expectations. The team leveraged Splunk software to monitor the APIs’ performance; this enabled them to shift from being reactive to proactive, as they could monitor performance levels and intervene before degradation or outages occurred. A friendly competition ensued between the teams and departments providing APIs to build the best performer, resulting in even greater efficiencies over time.
If your scanner isn’t effective at detecting the vulnerabilities present on a deliberately vulnerable application, then you should look for tools that are more effective at testing APIs for vulnerabilities. Due to the unique nature of APIs, not only do they need to be thoroughly tested, but they also need to be tested for business logic flaws. The OWASP API Security Top 10 is an excellent cheat sheet that helps you understand the highest vulnerabilities that plague APIs, such as business logic flaws.
How does Postman support API integration?
So the engineers started thinking about a different kind of architecture, one in which each piece of code would own its own database and encapsulated business logic. We called them “services,” well before the popularity of service-oriented architecture. Dependencies were embodied in APIs, giving teams the freedom to make rapid changes to the underlying data model and logic as the business demanded. This allowed an evolutionary approach to engineering and let us carve out the monolith, piece by piece. The modernization program first targeted legacy systems for Foodservice, one of Coca-Cola’s oldest businesses. The challenge was to convince long-established customers—some with contracts dating back a century—that moving away from paper-based data delivery would make it easier to do business with the company.
- The platform teams and product managers should have consistent communication to be aware of shared assets, policies and practices.
- APIs enable real-time data sharing, communication, and integration between systems, fostering collaboration and swift responses to market changes.
- It enables businesses to handle increasing data volumes and transaction loads.
- Positive tests verify that the API works correctly under normal conditions, while negative tests help uncover potential edge cases and validate error handling mechanisms.
- The corresponding Salesforce account can automatically use the new score—and so on.
- The introduction of semantic versioning brings several benefits to API developers and customers.
Effectively using APIs can reduce operational or technology costs by simplifying and accelerating development. One bank, for instance, created a library of standardized APIs that software developers could use as needed for a wide variety of data-access tasks rather than having to figure out the process each time. Doing so reduced traditional product-development IT costs by 41 percent and led to a 12-fold increase in new releases. Seeing these kinds of tangible benefits makes it easier for business leaders to increase their expectations of their software engineers to develop better products more efficiently. Quantifying that potential value in potential savings, efficiencies, and FTE reassignment is crucial in building a business case to invest in developing APIs. Network professionals confident in their APIs have higher confidence in DNS security because integration with security tools enables organizations to stream DNS data for analysis and policy enforcement.
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As you build up your collection of APIs, your colleagues and partners can begin to rely on them when implementing automations and do so without worrying about the applications and data behind the API endpoints. With employees able to spend more of their time on tactical, thoughtful tasks, versus manual, repetitive ones, they’re more likely to enjoy their work and be more productive. This also benefits customers as, according to the Harvard Business Review, happier employees are more likely to deliver experiences that leave customers happier as well. While there are many different types of APIs, the most common is a REST or RESTful API, which provides a specific set of standards and rules for building and calling to APIs.
These limits are put in place to prevent abuse, protect server resources, and ensure fair usage by all API customers. Throttling, on the other hand, controls the speed at which requests are processed to prevent server overload and maintain overall system performance. Many retailers rely on accurate weather forecasts to set orders for their shops. This not only saves time and reduces the manual effort required to obtain weather data, but also allows retailers to select and order food more accurately – especially when the weather changes at short notice!
Guide to building an enterprise API strategy
An API analytics engine collects and analyzes metrics related to API use, and produces reports for API developers and other stakeholders. API metrics may include the number of calls, the users making API calls, latency, uptime and availability, CPU memory utilization, errors and trends over time. Policies use logical statements operated global database api through the API gateway to determine an API’s availability and behavior — how it controls the flow of data, throttles calls, handles variables and so on. An API management tool typically includes an array of default policies out of the box, but organizations can modify and add policies to suit the unique needs of the business.
Network issues such as high latency, packet loss, or network congestion can also affect API integrations. To mitigate the impact of these issues, implementing the circuit breaker pattern is beneficial. The circuit breaker monitors the success and failure rates of API calls and triggers when the failure rate exceeds a predefined threshold.
What Are the Advantages of API-Driven Development?
One popular approach is to use a library or SDK (software development kit) for the API you’d like to integrate. SDKs provide pre-written, reusable code snippets for authentication, request handling, and response parsing, which simplifies the integration process. Establishing a centralized body, such as an API Center of Excellence (CoE), is crucial for overseeing API design and development across the organization. With the help of visual dashboards and related tools, the CoE can manage all the APIs in the catalog to avoid duplication, enable reuse, and assist with developer access. Effective API leadership establishes clear decision rights (about what APIs to develop, for example, or how to resolve conflicts) and identifies both what API capabilities are needed and what new APIs the business needs to evolve. Apigee, for example, has created a set of compatible APIs that help banks address PSD2 requirements (supported by an open-banking infrastructure).
Driving successful execution of the API strategy
API management platforms benefit organizations by centralizing control over their API integrations while ensuring they continuously meet high performance and security standards. Larry previously served as the Banking and Securities sector leader for US Consulting. Prior to his FSI role, he launched and led the Application Management Services practice. Larry joined the firm in 1996 and has more than 20 years of experience helping clients use technology and innovation to transform their business.
A client application can access one of these endpoints by making an API call to the application’s server; if successful, the client application receives the requested data or functionality in near real-time. We’ll explain why API integration can be an invaluable part of your digital transformation efforts by highlighting some of the top benefits it provides. Ultimately, the choice of caching and synchronization approaches should be based on your specific API use cases and performance goals. Consider performing performance testing and analysis to evaluate the impact of different strategies on your system’s responsiveness, scalability, and data integrity. In distributed systems involving multiple API servers or microservices, ensuring data consistency and synchronization becomes a critical factor.