Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

February 2022

What is Artifact Review?

Quality software starts with code review, but quality doesn’t begin and end with code. Documents and artifacts need proper attention to make sure nothing slips through the cracks. To ensure quality software, it's essential to review the software artifacts left behind from the code review process. If code review is the unglamorous task of eating your vegetables, artifact review might as well be getting your 10,000 steps in. Both can be downright boring, but they're good for you.

Parameter Binding: Native API/Native Code vs SourcePro DB

In the previous article, we walked through an example of how to query and retrieve data from a MySQL database using the native MySQL C API and then compared that to the clean simplicity of using the SourcePro DB API. In this article, we are going to take that a step further and look at input parameter binding. Building off the system we discussed previously that manages the accounts for a credit card system, we are now going to implement a simple application that can add transactions to an account.

7 Habits of Effective API and Service Management

Organizations face many challenges every day, and every day new challenges emerge. You have the day-to-day obstacles to overcome and then there is new twist. Today, the biggest challenge emerging on the market is how to adopt and implement effective API and service management habits. The number of APIs and services a company uses is growing exponentially every day, managing them individually or with a corporate wiki is just not possible.

Load test WordPress + nginx on Kubernetes

Why this combination you ask? Load testing is my passion, and I am partial to Kubernetes. I challenged myself to share a use case that many could relate to, focused on a business critical application. Websites came to mind and WordPress is the world’s most popular website management system. Of course, nginx is the most popular web server so let’s throw that into the mix. And Kubernetes? With more than 50% of corporations adopting Kubernetes in 2021, what better system to run in.

Startup Program From Moesif Improves Developer Journey

Interested in taking your product to the next stage of growth but have missing metrics? We understand that as a startup, companies are laser focused on getting their product out the door. Founding teams today don’t want to (or need to) create their own user management, billing, or other analytics tools. By forging partnerships with best-in-breed providers, startups can take advantage of these analytical tools without wasting engineering manpower to create in-house toolkits.

Digital Marketing Automation 2022 | Context, Examples, Challenges

The explosion of marketing technology (martech) has been one of the main drivers of marketing’s evolution over the last decade. Just compare: The Chief Marketing Technologist blog has been tracking the industry’s growth for ten years and when it first released its yearly marketing technology landscape overview in 2008, the chart contained roughly 150 tools.

How Digital Transformation is Changing the Insurance Industry

You have heard the terms digital transformation and cloud computing many times in the past decade, but now it has come to the insurance sector. Digital technologies have had a major effect on just about every industry from retail and manufacturing to healthcare and hospitality. The insurance industry is often slower to jump on any new trends. Insurance providers are set in tradition and don’t usually see much need to change.

Working with REST APIs - Flutter

Data, data, and data. Everything we see in today’s world is just data. So how can we get data into our app? How can we integrate APIs into our app? Let’s find out! There are a lot of ways we show data in our app, such as: The most common method is to show data from a database or public APIs. Even loading data from a database involves using APIs, though these can be private. So, let’s see how you can integrate APIs, fetch data from a public API, and use it in your Flutter app!

API Gateway Cache With Kong's Proxy Cache Plugin

In applications built on a system of microservices, developers should always be on the lookout for opportunities to eliminate unnecessary use of resources, such as database queries, network hops or service requests. API gateway cache (or response caching) is an excellent place to start. For many microservices, identical requests sent within a window of time will yield identical responses. For example, consider a request to an Orders API for the list of orders submitted yesterday.

Kuma 1.5.0 and Kong Mesh 1.6.0 Released

We are happy to announce the first release for both Kong Mesh and Kuma in 2022, which is packed with features and improvements, including substantial performance improvements when running at scale. We strongly suggest to upgrade, in order to take advantage of the latest and greatest when it comes to service mesh.

Kong Ingress Controller 2.2 GA With Gateway API Support

Today, Kong Ingress Controller (KIC) 2.2 is now generally available. KIC 2.2 marks a major milestone in the development of the Kong Ingress Controller, as it is the first release containing a marquee feature, Gateway API. This represents a major milestone for Kong as we continue to keep up to date with the upstream community and provide the best customer experience for KIC customers. Gateway API is an open source project managed by the Kubernetes SIG Network community.

Best Practices for Usage-based Billing to Monetize APIs

API monetization is a great way to recoup your investment into your API programs. Without direct monetization, you’re dependent on other sources of capital to grow the program, such as other profit centers or venture capital. If you’re not directly monetizing your APIs, you could be leaving money on the table. This can be especially true if you don’t have any limits in place and lean on the honor system.

Kong Ingress Controller Feature Preview: Gateway API

Kong Ingress Controller (KIC) 2.2 is now generally available. KIC 2.2 marks a major milestone in the development of the Kong Ingress Controller, as it is the first release containing a marquee feature, Gateway API. This represents a major milestone for Kong as we continue to keep up to date with the upstream community and provide the best customer experience for KIC customers. In this video, @Viktor Gamov, a principal developer advocate with Kong, gives a preview of the most exciting part of this release: Gateway API support.

Why Boomi May Not Be Right For You

Boomi is a software platform that helps you build and run data integration, deployment, and configuration automation applications. Boomi offers enterprise-class features for the demands of large organizations. However, Boomi may not be the right fit for every company. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the reasons why Boomi may not be suitable for you.

Golang Testing Frameworks for Every Type of Test

While Go provides a testing package and a go test command, the former only offers basic testing capabilities. The package also has some drawbacks, such as missing assertions and increasing repetition with large-scale tests. As a result, several Go testing frameworks have been created to augment it. Go testing frameworks consist of tools and resources for creating and designing tests. Some of these frameworks incorporate the testing package and go test command, while others take a different approach.

Rebranding DevOps as Cloud Engineering

In this episode of Kongcast, Matt Stratton, a staff developer advocate at Pulumi, explains the history of configuration automation, the world of cloud engineering and how it compares to DevOps. Check out the transcript and video from our conversation below, and be sure to subscribe to get email alerts for the latest new episodes. Viktor: So before we jump to this one, tell us a bit about yourself. Matt: I spent about two decades working in traditional technology operations. I was a sysadmin.

Choosing the right network architecture for your Apigee-fueled APIs

API gateways are a critical component of a modern architecture. Apigee X is Google Cloud's API management platform. It also allows users of the legacy Apigee Edge product to leverage Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) products and features, like Cloud Armor and Load Balancers. With these new security and availability advantages come a new set of challenges. The biggest challenge is accessing API backends in multiple VPCs. This introduces VPC peering transitivity restrictions.

Harnessing the Power of Insomnia Plugins

Insomnia is a fast and lightweight open source desktop application that doubles as a tool for API design and testing and as an API client for making HTTP requests. It has built-in support for REST Client, gRPC and GraphQL. All of that is just what you get out of the box. Many users of Insomnia aren’t aware of its secret menu: plugins. Plugins are key to enhancing your usage of Insomnia. Insomnia already boasts a library of nearly 350 plugins, and they’re quick and simple to install.

Using gRPC with Python

Microservice is now the architecture of choice for many developers when crafting cloud-native applications. A microservices application is a collection of loosely coupled services that communicate with each other, enhancing collaboration, maintainability, scalability, and deployment. There are several options for enabling this communication between microservices. REST is the most popular among developers, sometimes used synonymously with APIs. However, gRPC can be a better alternative to REST.

7 HCM Integration Best Practices

Human capital management (HCM) is a set of practices used by the human resources department for onboarding new talent. These practices focus on the needs of the organization to fulfill specific vacancies and are implemented across three main categories: hiring, managing and optimizing the workforce. HR departments rely heavily on their apps.

Dev Portal Accessibility (a11y) Improvements

Multiple teams at Kong have been improving accessibility (also referred to as a11y) across our products. Over the past few months, our Dev Portal team has been working on accessibility improvements prompted by the needs of our customers. For example, financial services and government institutions are required by law to ensure their software meets certain accessibility standards.

Kong vs. Apigee: Fast, Pain-Free Compliance

We live in an API-driven economy, where Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are increasingly being used to open new revenue channels, accelerate time to market and democratize data. Enterprises are constantly striving to build faster, more reliable and easier to use APIs. They understand that every time an API is down, unresponsive or slow enterprises run the risk of losing customers, damaging company reputation and losing revenue. At the same time, API security breaches are at an all-time high.

Installing Kong to Kubernetes Using Helm - Part 2 | #KongBuilders

In #KongBuilders #livestream, Viktor Gamov takes our developer-focused toolsets and puts them on display in the best venue possible – building applications and connecting workloads. In this week's episode, Viktor continues on from the last episode by showing you how to install #Kong to #Kubernetes using #Helm.

A simple way to implement usage-based API billing is finally here

Metered Billing has finally arrived in Moesif and we are super excited to be rolling out this latest feature. We have worked hard to deliver a smooth and simple way to monetize your APIs by allowing usage that is tracked in Moesif to be metered and billed by your favorite billing providers. Moesif can calculate and send usage data to a billing provider so your customers can be billed accurately, based on their usage.

Is Data Mesh or API Management Right For You?

API management has been around for over a decade. It is the process of designing, analyzing, documenting, and publishing APIs in a secure environment. A comprehensive API management solution can guarantee that the APIs you create are consumable and secure. However, how do you know if data mesh or API management is right for your business? The concept of data mesh was introduced a few years ago by Zhamak Dehghani on Martin Fowler’s bliki.

Getting Started with Skaffold for Kubernetes Deployments

Kubernetes has experienced rapid growth over the years, with a recent post from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation reporting a userbase increase of about 67% in just the past year. Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that automates how containers are deployed, how they communicate, and how traffic is routed between them; it also scales configurations for both the containerized workloads and the underlying infrastructure that comprises the cluster.

How Zones and Meshes Fit Into Your Service Mesh Deployment

Kong Mesh (and Kuma, the open source project upon which Kong Mesh is built) supports multiple zones and meshes. What is the difference between a zone and a mesh, though? And when should one use a zone versus a mesh or vice versa? By the time you’re done reading this blog post, you’ll have a better understanding of the role of zones and meshes and where each of them fit into a Kong Mesh deployment.

API Discoverability and Self Service

Businesses have been adopting more apps over the last decade. The right applications make it easier for them to communicate with customers, analyze data, improve efficiency, and refine their business practices. The number of apps used by businesses jumped incredibly during 2020 as the pandemic made it more difficult or impossible for employees to work from their offices. As organizations rely more heavily on diverse applications, they need reliable API management tools with self-service features.

Banking API vs Open Banking vs Neo Banking Made Simpler

Fintech is the future of finance. From digital wallets to firms that help traditional banks create digital customer solutions, financial technology companies are thriving. Because of this, you may come across plenty of new banking terms. Keeping up with this terminology may seem challenging, which is why we’ve created our guide to the banking API vs Open Banking and Neo Banking.

Developer Experience Vs. User Experience

While they may seem similar at first glance, Developer Experience (DX) is not just “User Experience (UX) for developers”. Rather, DX is an extension of UX focused on users who build with technical languages and tooling. DX follows the same core principles of UX but extends it by recognizing that technical details and mechanical processes can be understood and utilized efficiently by a developer.

Data Mapping Best Practices | A Guide to Types, Approaches, Tools

In any application integration, data migration and in general, any data management initiative, data mapping is one of the most critical steps. One could even argue that the integrations project success depends largely on correct mapping of source to target data. So, let’s review what the data mapping best practices are: the types, the common approaches as well as the useful data mapping tools.

3 Benefits of API Banking

Financial institutions rely on APIs to permit their different financial software solutions to communicate or to give clients access to their processes. Every time a client opens a mobile app for banking on their phone or interacts with the financial services industry through the web, they are using APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). The interaction with mobile users is one of the biggest benefits of API banking and APIs in general.

Newly Developing Technology Promises a Bright Future for IT

The future is unpredictable. One thing you can count on is the future of IT. The IT world will continue to grow, expand and make breakthroughs, no matter what else is happening in the world. Your competition jumps on new technology as soon as they are able. To stay ahead of them, you have to be prepared to embrace IT transformation before they do. The future of IT promises to bring unprecedented opportunities for businesses prepared to implement new technologies sooner, rather than later.

Auto-generate Postman Collections from traffic

Postman is a great tool for API testing during development. It’s GUI is simple to learn and ubiquitous. However, manually writing test cases for local development gets tedious fast if you have a lot of endpoints. Meticulously entering every detail for every use case takes forever. Also, if you get one HTTP Header or parameter wrong, it can take hours to diagnose. And even when it’s done, the API tests are almost immediately out of date because the API contract changes.

Why APIs Are Central To Your Integration Strategy

Whether you’re adding to your app ecosystem or working on a full digital transformation business strategy, your aim is a smooth enterprise integration process. But when you’re working with multiple programming languages, brands, or operating systems, it can get complicated quickly. API integration is now critical to business functionality in an increasingly technical world. It’s the best way to avoid compatibility issues with all your apps and opens the door for future implementations.

Ensuring Quality in Microservices Architecture with Support for gRPC Testing

Microservices architecture. Many organizations today recognize it enables faster and easier software changes over more traditional monoliths. Microservices have become the backbone for how organizations develop cloud-native applications – programs that run independently in containers designed for cloud computing architectures.

How to Develop A Winning API Product Strategy

Every business strives to succeed in the digital economy. Consumers are shifting their focus away from physical products and towards connected experiences, prompting companies to change product designs and best management practices. An API product strategy can help aid you in your business’ journey to success in the digital economy.

On the Future of Digital Innovation

WSO2 passed many key milestones in 2021: by year-end, we had over 700 customers in nearly 90 countries, our annual recurring revenue (ARR) grew 31% to reach $63.3 million, and we achieved a net dollar retention (NDR) of 109%. We also expanded the team from 550 to over 900 employees in less than two years and hired several key senior leaders.

For Every Github Action...

On Nov 13, 2019 Github made it’s CI/CD solution GitHub Actions generally available to the world. Since then tens of thousands of shared workflows have been published. It is now the default for most Github projects given how easy it is to integrate with an existing repo. Projects of all sizes have adopted it from our homegrown Terraform module to the Docker Cli. This is why at Speedscale we’ve published a template for how to use Speedscale in conjunction with GitHub Actions.

Data Programmability with Snowpark API and Java UDFs

Not every developer wants to write in SQL, nor does SQL naturally handle every data programmability problem. This leads users to pull their data into other systems, which adds cost, time, and complexity while hurting security and governance. Snowflake is continuously making the platform more developer-friendly and extensible so more can be done with less. In this session, we discuss the present and future of Snowflake's extensibility, including Java UDFs and Snowpark. We'll also demo many exciting features in our roadmap and explore the scenarios they unlock.

EDI vs API in B2B partner onboarding | How you can use both

This discussion has been going for years: who wins the battle of EDI vs API? On the one hand, EDI is considered to be a legacy technology that is difficult to implement and maintain. Yet at the same time many enterprise-grade software systems have it as a key element of information communication. In fact EDI continues to play an integral role specifically in the supply chain oriented industries such as logistics, automotive and, of course, retail.

Why Kong Might Not Be Right for You

In today’s world, tech and software possibilities are exponentially expanding. Whether it is the innovation of cloud-based storage or a solution to a very old problem, there is always something new coming out. While the innovation allows businesses to become more streamlined and optimized than ever before, integrating this new software into your business may be a challenging task.

AWS' Newest Official Partner: Speedscale

Speedscale is excited to join the AWS Partner Network (APN), the global community of partners who leverage Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build solutions and services for customers. AWS Partners are uniquely positioned to help businesses take full advantage of all that AWS has to offer and accelerate the journey to the cloud. As part of this achievement, Speedscale has completed the AWS Foundational Technical Review (FTR).

Why We're Deprecating Cassandra Support

Starting with the 2.7 release, using Cassandra as a configuration datastore for the Kong Gateway will be considered deprecated. Cassandra features will remain in Kong throughout the (currently unreleased) 3.x series, and its use will not be prohibited. However, some newly introduced functionality throughout 3.x may not be optimized for performance or have full functionality when using Cassandra.

Why Tyk May Not Be Right For You

Tyk is becoming increasingly popular among developers who want to create a secure microservices-based architecture and connect apps and services that comprise a cloud and hybrid cloud IT infrastructure. Tyk may not be right for you and your company for several reasons. Tyk says it can “empower your teams” and “put your devs in the driving seat.” It also calls itself the “leading cloud-native API and service management platform.” But how true are these claims?

WSO2 Partner Awards: Rewarding Top Performers and Emerging Partners of 2021

2021 was another great year for WSO2. Although it was business as usual in the new norm, the results were exceptional. The company acquired 145 new customers and achieved revenue growth of 31% YoY. We started our journey towards radically simplifying the creation of digital experiences for our customers by introducing new cloud platforms.

A Guide to WSO2 Identity Server

Identity and access management (IAM) is the efficient integration and management of identities, giving users access to the right resources at the right time. Identity is no longer a mere security project for enterprises. In the integration and API domain, as businesses continue to increase the number of internal and third-party APIs, it's more important than ever that APIs are integrated and governed securely. In the user domain, with increasing user identity spaces, company-wide policies, complex structure hierarchies and roles, regulatory pressures, and customer-facing applications, security becomes a bigger challenge each day for identity architects and administrators.