IBM API Connect
API Connect enables users to expose APIs, through a developer portal, targeting application developers both inside & outside their organization.
IBM API Connect is an end-to-end solution that allows users to create, secure, manage, socialize, monetize and analyze APIs. It provides a powerful set of capabilities from turning backend RESTFUL or SOAP services into managed services. This is done by publishing APIs to API Gateways while enforcing lifecycle and governance controls on those APIs. API Connect enables users to expose APIs, through a developer portal, targeting application developers both inside and outside their organization. Additionally, the solution’s analytics tooling helps API providers and API consumers better understand the health and consumption of deployed APIs.
The major components of API Connect, as well as considerations for configuring different clouds and environments within API Connect so that users can be successful in their API strategies. It targets Solution and Integration Architects.
IBM API Connect
There are four different Components in API Connect
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The Management Service provides two functional roles. The API Manager and the Cloud Manager.
- The Cloud Manager controls the infrastructure of the API Cloud. This is typically only accessed by Infrastructure or Operation teams.
- The API Manager controls the creation, publication and management of APIs.
- It hosts the Cloud Manager user interface, targeting Will the Cloud Manager and his team
- It hosts the API Manager user interface, which is leveraged by Steve, Jason and Shavon
- Enables API provider lines of business to build and publish APIs
- It contains a persistent database that is used to store the configuration data about the system
- It contains a rich set of RESTFul and CLI commands to automate API Management tasks for your organization
- It maintains and manages the connection to the user registries that validate both providers and consumers of APIs
The Cloud Manager controls the infrastructure of the API Cloud. This is typically only accessed by Infrastructure or Operation teams.
The API Manager controls the creation, publication and management of APIs.
It hosts the Cloud Manager user interface, targeting Will the Cloud Manager and his team
It hosts the API Manager user interface, which is leveraged by Steve, Jason and Shavon.
Enables API provider lines of business to build and publish APIs.
It contains a persistent database that is used to store the configuration data about the system.
It contains a rich set of RESTFul and CLI commands to automate API Management tasks for your organization.
It maintains and manages the connection to the user registries that validate both providers and consumers of APIs.
Gateway Service
- Validating that the application that is making the API call is permitted to access the API (i.e. has an active subscription to a product that contains the API operation)
- Enforcing the security constraints defined by the API such as a requirement to authenticate using a protocol like Basic Authentication or OAuth 2.0
- Enforcing rate limits so that the calling application cannot invoke the API more frequently than the API provider has specified.
- Invoking the outbound request to the backend service or services that are defined in the API implementation, which may involve protocol transformation such as a RESTFul API calling out to a backend SOAP service
- Aggregating responses from potentially multiple backend service calls and returning the relevant content of those requests to the original caller
Validating that the application that is making the API call is permitted to access the API (i.e. has an active subscription to a product that contains the API operation).
Enforcing the security constraints defined by the API such as a requirement to authenticate using a protocol like Basic Authentication or OAuth 2.0
Invoking the outbound request to the backend service or services that are defined in the API implementation, which may involve protocol transformation such as a RESTFul API calling out to a backend SOAP service