API Management
Main features of an API management solution are:
- An API gateway: It's the entry-point for the incoming requests. The gateway is routing the request to a backend API thanks to configured rules. Furthermore, the gateway is able apply some filters to the request before reaching the target backend. The filters can be about quotas, security (AuthN and AuthZ), accounting, transformation, etc.
- An analytic platform: It collects metrics that are coming from the Gateway and provides dashboard to expose those metrics. The main purpose of this platform is to provide information about the API consumption (for instance: in order to produce billing).
- A development portal: It expose the API documentations and manages the developer enrollment: get API credentials, give access to sandbox and production environment, etc.
- A facade API: It allow to expose high level API. Make composition, orchestration, or transformation (SOAP to REST for instance) of requests. Although some major cloud solution provider covers this feature (with awesome GUI), a facade API is generally a dedicated development because to specific.