REST and (the newer) GraphQL APIs are the core technologies behind the vast most of today’s integrations. These APIs allow external developers to tap into the functionality of the major platforms and build in their custom functionality to suit their needs. The fundamental difference is that REST is an architectural design framework based on HTTP, while GraphQL is a query syntax that is not transport-dependent.
This blog was co-created by Ricardo Ferreira (Elastic) and Viktor Gamov (Kong). We love our microservices, but without a proper observability (O11y) strategy, they can quickly become cold, dark places cluttered with broken or unknown features. O11y is one of those technologies deemed created by causation: the only reason it exists is that other technologies pushed for it. There wouldn’t be need for O11y if, for example, our technologies haven’t gotten so complex across the years.
Webhooks vs API, oh well. When there is a talk about what method to use in order to seamlessly sync datasets between applications, platforms and databases (in other words, to perform application integration), APIs are often named as today’s best-practices method for handling this.
As more companies invest in a cloud native infrastructure, they’re choosing to prioritize their applications as microservices—architecting them into distinct servers. Each component is responsible for one (and only one) feature. For example, you might have Server A responsible for handling billing logic, Server B for handling user interaction and Server C for handling third-party user interactions.
At Kong, we run performance testing in CI in every commit or pull request that has a potential performance impact, as well as on each release. Thanks to the performance testing framework and its integration with Github Actions, we can easily get basic metrics like RPS and latency. Also, flame graphs to pinpoint the significant part that draws down performance. With that workflow in place, we figured one of the most significant parts of Kong’s hotpath is Nginx variable accesses.
As part of the Kong Gateway 2.6 release, we shipped a brand new jq plugin for anyone with an enterprise license to use. It’s like we combined the request and response transformer plugins to form a single, more powerful plugin—supercharging the way we work with request and response bodies. If you’re not familiar with jq, it’s a JSON processing language that allows you to manipulate any JSON document and transform it however you need.
