An API is a process where one application, website, or software can talk to another and provides a way for the developers of one application to interact with the components of another application. The goal is to make it easier for people who are working on different projects at the same time to work together seamlessly. There are various reasons that an API may be needed. We can see many companies using APIs in their software development processes, such as Slack, Google Docs, Facebook, and Gmail.

What I see too often though is folks running multiple UI tests in an attempt to validate specific output values or logic. A much easier way to accomplish this task is to run specific API tests on the business logic of the software. Why should we do this? It’s much faster and easier to write these tests. We can have our developers supporting this process and not just Selenium or automation experts. 'Work smarter, not harder' is a theory we should all be familiar with.

Many current web applications rely on near-frictionless and simultaneous access to numerous API providers' Web APIs. However, the web's default is to prohibit such "loose" behaviour, much like a firewall that blocks access to untrusted parties in the name of security. That default, thankfully, can be safely altered. Before doing so, however, it is necessary for both Web application developers and API providers to understand the concepts of Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS).

In this episode of Kongcast, I spoke with Chinmay Gaikwad, the tech evangelist at Epsagon, about distributed tracing and observability for microservices architectures. Check out the transcript and video from our conversation below, and be sure to subscribe to get email alerts for the latest new episodes.

Mulesoft is an all-inclusive data and application integration platform owned by Salesforce. It offers many types of functionality, including Extract, Transform, Load (ETL), API management, and Integration Platform as a Service (IPaaS). Mulesoft may offer a broad range of capabilities, but it has a challenging learning curve, a high price point, and may be far more than what your organization needs for data transformation.

APIs are created so that users can use them as a bridge to connect to applications and services. There are thousands of APIs available for consumption, and each API is unique. But it’s really easy to consume APIs to extend the capabilities of your Linx apps, even complex ones that require OAuth 2.0 tokens. Let us show you how with a real-life example.

As the enterprise IT landscape becomes larger and more complex, many organizations are finding it difficult to manage all of their systems and services. According to a study by the access management company Okta, businesses use an average of 73 different enterprise software applications — and 1 in 10 businesses use more than 200 apps. On-premise business APIs can help connect these applications, but they come with several noteworthy drawbacks.

In the business world today, data is becoming increasingly more important with each passing year. If your company is not taking the time to learn how to store, analyze and scale data properly now, it could prove detrimental to the business in the long run. However, just as bad data practices can hold your company back, good data practices can propel the company forward. APIs are one tool that any business can use to begin better utilizing their data today.

Earlier this year, we hosted our inaugural Kong Summit Hackathon. This virtual competition engaged our open source community and offered recognition and prizes for hacks in various categories. The community delivered with ingenious plugins, hacks and documentation. In this blog post, we highlight our Insomnia plugin winner, Scott Harwell. Scott works with many hyperscalar cloud infrastructure vendors.