API Development
I’ve been writing and teaching about the Align-Define-Design-Refine (ADDR) API design first process for many years. Along the way, I have made updates and improvements to the process. One thing that was lacking was a tool to complement the work of teams using ADDR. I’ve recently begun to explore a new product from Ambassador called Blackbird, which promises to accelerate the API lifecycle.
In this article, I’ll provide a brief review of the ADDR process, then use the artifacts from ADDR to help me design and mock the API. I’ll capture some tips and call out a few wishlist items that I hope Blackbird will incorporate into future releases.
Understanding the ADDR Process
August 26, 2024 | 7 min read
API Development
Where Have All the Testing & QA Folks Gone?
If you do a quick Google search, it becomes apparent that the death of Quality Assurance (QA) has come and gone. As someone who has worked in companies with no dedicated QA team for several years now, I’d say the mainstream is finally catching up to this trend. The notion that the role of Quality Assurance (QA) is dead can be attributed to several recent trends and changes in the software development industry in recent years, including:
Shift-Left Testing: The greater adoption of agile methodologies and DevOps has led to a shift-left approach in testing, where testing activities are performed earlier in the development process. This approach integrates testing into the development process, meaning that developers are now more involved in testing throughout the entire lifecycle.
August 22, 2024 | 10 min read
API Gateway
With the popularity of microservice architecture, the API gateway has become one of the indispensable components of microservice architecture. It plays the role of a portal connecting clients and microservices, providing functions such as routing, authentication, authorization, monitoring, logging, etc. This article will explore what a microservice API Gateway is and what features and benefits it provides for engineers to fully understand and effectively use a microservice API gateway like Edge Stack.
What is API Gateway Microservices?
A microservices API Gateway acts as a reverse proxy for the interaction between clients and service systems. It is also responsible for forwarding client requests to the corresponding microservice instances and providing a series of functions to manage and protect these microservices. Choosing a suitable API gateway can effectively simplify development and improve the operation and management efficiency of your microservice architecture. API Gateways are a solution for a system designed in the microservice architecture, which is used to integrate microservices of different modules and unify and coordinate services.
August 20, 2024 | 12 min read
API Gateway
Towards a modern approach for addressing security threats, mitigating risks, and shielding application deployments on Kubernetes with modern WAF architecture
A web application firewall (WAF) is a crucial part of network security architecture that inspects, sanitizes, and redacts malicious HTTP requests for applications. Since WAFs are operating on the application layer (layer 7 in the OSI model), traffic payloads originating from users and bots can be analyzed, in the hopes of blocking malicious clients and letting legitimate client requests proceed.
WAF architecture is a critical part of any enterprise platform as they’ll protect against Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks, OWASP Top Ten security risks, and apply advanced rate limiting strategies.
August 15, 2024 | 8 min read
API Gateway
Observing APIs in today’s world and ensuring the reliability and performance of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) is crucial. How do organizations ensure that their APIs are constantly evaluated for their health and that errors or security vulnerabilities do not slow down an API and the application?
This is where API observability comes into play. But what exactly is API observability, and why is it so important?
What is API Observability?
August 13, 2024 | 16 min read
API Gateway
Learn why self-service API gateways are vital for Kubernetes and DevOps teams.
Before Kubernetes, users would send requests to an API gateway which would then route to a single, monolithic application. The monolithic application was likely developed by a team of many developers, and any changes to the API gateway would be reviewed by the operations team, who was responsible for managing the gateway.
How Microservices Change Your API Gateway
August 9, 2024 | 2 min read
