APIs and the Cloud: An Impact Study

In their recent white paper, ThousandEyes concludes that all the clouds offer good choices from the perspective of network performance with solid backbones for data transfer. But that’s only part of the story. When we started with our unique multi-cloud approach, we assumed that there wouldn’t be much difference between different clouds when they’re used to call APIs. The fact is, they’re all VERY different. How we analyze performance Our product makes a series of calls to API endpoints. We use the same security (OAuth, OAuth+JWT, etc.) as a TPP (Third-Party Payment) provider or ASIP (Account Service Information) provider [...]

By |2018-11-15T09:50:42+00:00November 15th, 2018|Fintech, IT and Cloud, News, Opinion|0 Comments
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Monitoring APIs: Expect The Unexpected

When it comes to monitoring APIs, getting a 2xx back is not enough. You have to check that the returned payload is what is actually expected. So, if the expected payload contains 14 language options, it does contain 14 and not 3. This is another reason why it is also vital to continuously test your APIs - also known as active monitoring. Sure, the API test suite might have passed in both the sandbox and live environments. But if the backend is pulling data off third-party systems (like a hotel price comparison website), there is no guarantee that the data [...]

By |2018-11-12T08:12:32+00:00November 12th, 2018|Opinion|0 Comments
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Free Puppy!!! (AKA Free Software Is Rarely Free)

We do that! It really doesn’t matter what ‘that’ is. It could be API monitoring, it could be networking monitoring, it could be security services. It could be one of a dozen things. But the sales team for your infrastructure vendor is sure they do it or have a module for it, and they’ll do it for you for free as part of the large contract you’re signing with them. This offer of free software (or security or whatever) reminds me of two common problems. Problem one: the ‘free puppy problem’ Somebody gives you a free puppy. That’s great! You [...]

By |2018-11-12T02:25:43+00:00October 30th, 2018|Enterprise IT, Fintech, Opinion|0 Comments
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Happy Birthday to Application Programming Interface (And Me!)

Merriam-Webster has created a "Time Traveler" tool to let people see what words entered the language in the year of their birth. It's interesting to discover how old (and how new!) some words are. Being part of APImetrics, I looked up Application Programming Interface - now commonly known as API. According to Merrian-Webster, it was a term first seen in 1968. Which is a bit of a coincidence, as it is the very year that both David and I were first seen too! What are the chances of that? Such a momentous year: the Tet Offensive, MLK, Les Événements, RFK, [...]

By |2018-11-12T02:25:52+00:00October 29th, 2018|Opinion|0 Comments
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Brought Low by a Humble Bug in the Google+ People API

I remember when Google+ was a thing. And then when it was a thing again. Both those periods were a long time ago. But it was still a shock to see that Google+ is soon to be shuttered for good – and to learn that it was brought low by a humble bug in the Google+ People API. We've said it before: you've got to keep on monitoring your APIs once they are in production. In the case of Google+, it looks as though the bug arose through Google+ People API's interaction with a change in the Google+ codebase. The [...]

By |2018-10-18T11:16:51+00:00October 17th, 2018|API Update, Enterprise IT, Opinion|0 Comments
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API Compliance Monitoring – Can you afford not to?

In the rapidly expanding fields of Open Banking, where there are regulations driven by systems like the European Payment Services Directive, you have to prove your IT systems work as the regulations require – AND, just to add a little extra complexity, some of the dependencies might be entirely outside your control! But when it comes to API Compliance Monitoring, the dirty secret of most testing and DevOps strategies is that they’re more interested in being able to prove the IT systems are working at all than working the way they’re meant to be. Compliance - Can [...]

By |2018-08-10T10:14:57+00:00August 9th, 2018|Fintech, Opinion|0 Comments
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Why API Monitoring?

Why API Monitoring One of the questions we get asked all the time is the deceptively simple: Why API monitoring? After all, companies and DevOps groups use LOTS of different monitoring tools. There’s the tool suite that come with their Amazon or Microsoft Cloud instance. There are stack monitoring tools for their backend, like New Relic or App Dynamic. There are the tools built into Axway or Apigee gateways. Then there are whole sets of web tools, from simple pings of a website to complex scripting tools, and a whole range of options for monitoring the network itself. [...]

By |2018-08-08T10:25:41+00:00August 8th, 2018|Cloud, Enterprise IT, Government, IT and Cloud, Opinion, Programming Tips|0 Comments
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The Open Banking Revolution Will Be Delayed

Recently, there has been a spate of interesting articles on the state of open banking in the UK. And "state" appears to be the operative word. As an openbanking.space article opines, Anyone with a LinkedIn account will see several articles a day extolling the virtues of open banking, and the potential it has to revolutionise behaviour in retail banking. The implication here is that this is all hype and, six months in, there is no revolution to televise yet: Open banking has not set the UK on fire. Which may very well be true. The HSBC app has been getting [...]

By |2018-08-15T08:24:28+00:00July 6th, 2018|Fintech, Opinion|0 Comments
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Watching The Connectors – SAP, Mulesoft, Cloud Elements, Oh My!

The SAP blog has a post on their new SAP Cloud Platform Open Connectors. Now, this idea is not new. In fact, I might even go as far as to suggest that great minds think alike; some of our readers might remember back to the dim and distant days of prehistory and feeds and even Viafo. Heck, this was what SOG (the Service Order Gateway) was doing back in the late 1990s when I worked on it at Ericsson. All APIs are abstraction layers. In the case of SOG, it presented a consistent interface to the Customer Administration System that [...]

By |2018-08-15T08:39:22+00:00June 14th, 2018|Opinion|0 Comments
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