Articles
🔍 7 Golden Rules for Creating API Libraries that Shine
This piece outlines seven crucial guidelines for developing API libraries that enhance the developer experience. The rules discussed include utilizing OpenAPI for automated code generation, generating idiomatic code that adheres to the language's standard practices, providing comprehensive release notes and guides for breaking changes, offering code snippets, developing a reference implementation, marking deprecation, and maintaining extensive documentation.
🔍 7 Takeaways from the State of the API 2024 Report
Postman's 2024 State of the API Report unveils several significant trends influencing the API industry, including the emergence of API-first strategies, the proliferation of API gateways, increased API monetization, AI-driven API growth, global API expansion, diversification of API users, and the vulnerability of APIs due to inadequate testing. The report emphasizes the critical role of APIs in propelling AI, automation, and various industries, while also stressing the need for enhanced security and testing measures.
🔍 Attacking APIs using JSON Injection
This piece explores the potential vulnerabilities of APIs due to JSON injection, using a JSON injection vulnerability in Samsung devices as an example, which could initiate an attack chain culminating in code execution on the device. The author underscores the problem of inconsistencies in how JSON parsers handle data, especially when multiple parsers with different quirks are involved, and suggests that understanding these nuances can assist in creating payloads that can bypass sanitization filters and affect business logic.
This article contrasts API Gateway and Backend for Frontend (BFF) patterns, explaining that API Gateway is suitable for applications with diverse clients but consistent API needs, while BFF is ideal when different clients require tailored data or workflows. The author notes that while API Gateway provides a single entry point to manage all services, BFF can offer optimized responses and reduced complexity for clients, but may require additional work to implement and maintain for different clients.
🔍 CDC and Data Streaming: Capture Database Changes in Real Time with Debezium PostgreSQL Connector
This article explores the role of change data capture (CDC) connectors in data streaming, focusing on the Debezium PostgreSQL CDC connector. It explains how CDC connectors track database changes in real time, enabling real-time analytics and event-driven workflows, and details how to implement a Debezium PostgreSQL CDC connector with Confluent Cloud, including common mistakes to avoid and best practices to follow.
🔍 Dismantling ELT: The Case for Graphs, Not Silos
This article argues for a shift from the traditional Extract, Load, Transform (ELT) mindset in data analytics to a more collaborative and integrated approach, referred to as the "graph mindset". The author suggests that this approach, which focuses on consuming data sources and building reliable, derived data sets, can improve efficiency, data quality, and business outcomes.
🔍 How to Write a v3 AsyncAPI Description
This piece discusses the significant changes brought by AsyncAPI v3.0, focusing on the use case of ordering medication using Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) messages. It explains the process of creating an AsyncAPI description using v3.0, including creating standardized messages, adding communication channels, and describing the operations, highlighting the benefits of the revised structure such as consistency, portability, and ownership.
🔍 Powerful HTTP/API Clients: Alternatives to Postman
This article reviews several alternatives to Postman for testing and developing APIs, including Insomnia, Bruno, Hoppscotch, RapidAPI, GetAPI, and Scalar. Each tool is evaluated based on its features, compatibility, and suitability for different use cases, with the author noting that while some tools offer similar functionality to Postman, others aim to simplify the process or offer unique features such as OpenAPI-centric development.
🔍 Understanding The Root Causes of API Drift
API drift, where APIs and their documentation become out of sync, is a prevalent issue that affects 75% of APIs, according to a recent report. The root causes of API drift include incomplete API documentation, early-stage API governance strategies, a lack of comprehensive testing, and a lack of specification-first development, all of which can lead to mismatched developer resources, broken integrations, and unhappy clients.
Apache Camel
🔍 How to connect Ollama AI using Apache Camel and Langchain4j component
This tutorial provides a step-by-step guide on how to connect Ollama AI using Apache Camel and Langchain4j component. The steps include setting up the development environment, creating the Quarkus project, configuring Quarkus to run Ollama LLM, creating Apache Camel route using Kaoto, creating a process to send user input to LLM, testing the app locally, and finally deploying the LLM and app on Red Hat Developer Sandbox.
🔍 Testing Apache Camel Routes with Testcontainers
The article discusses the use of Testcontainers and Apache Camel for testing integration routes in applications, using a university messaging platform as an example. Testcontainers is used to automate the setup of PostgreSQL databases for testing, while Apache Camel handles the integration of data between systems, demonstrating how these tools can simplify and improve the accuracy of integration testing.
Apache Kafka
🔍 Deep Dive into Handling Consumer Fetch Requests: Kafka Producer and Consumer Internals, Part 4
This article offers a comprehensive explanation of how Apache Kafka handles consumer fetch requests. It covers the process from the initial request to the broker, through data retrieval and response construction, to data deserialization and processing at the consumer end, including the management of polling and record committing.
🔍 Deep Dive into Kafka Connect Clusters: Structure, Scaling, and Task Management
This article provides an in-depth examination of Kafka Connect clusters, their structure, scaling strategies, and task management. It explains how clusters, composed of worker nodes and tasks, manage data connectors in a scalable and fault-tolerant manner, and discusses the benefits of using multiple Kafka Connect clusters for workload isolation, performance scaling, and geographical distribution. The article also provides best practices for deploying Kafka Connect clusters effectively.
🔍 Introduction Zookeeper to KRaft
This article discusses the migration from Zookeeper to KRaft for Kafka deployments, in light of Zookeeper's planned removal in Kafka 4.0. It details the process of migration using the Strimzi Operator, which automates much of the task, including the creation of Kafka controllers, reconfiguration of Kafka nodes, and metadata migration. The article also emphasizes the importance of monitoring the Kafka cluster during the migration process and provides suggestions for checks to ensure the successful functioning of the Kafka cluster post-migration.
Gravitee
🔍 How to add governance to Kafka
This article discusses how to add governance to Kafka, a tool for managing large-scale data flows, to safeguard against security risks and ensure data quality. It suggests using Gravitee's Kafka Gateway to implement fine-grained access controls, enforce data quality standards, and optimize performance, thus enabling organizations to use real-time data effectively and securely.
🔍 How to push Kafka data to multiple services
This article discusses how Gravitee's Kafka Gateway can simplify data integration with third-party services like AWS Lambda and EventBridge by exposing Kafka topics as webhooks. It allows developers to create an API that abstracts Kafka topics as webhooks, enabling data management and delivery with minimal configuration, and offers the flexibility to apply different policies depending on the plan type.
Kong
🔍 Faster Config Updates in Hybrid Mode with Incremental Config Sync
Kong Gateway has introduced Incremental Configuration Sync to its Hybrid Mode, allowing for more efficient updates to large configuration sets. Instead of sending the entire configuration set to each data plane when a change is made, only the parts of the configuration that have changed are sent, resulting in less data traveling over the network and faster propagation of configuration changes.
Mulesoft
🔍 MuleSoft: Best Practices on Batch Processing
This article provides best practices for batch processing in Mule 4, including optimizing batch size, leveraging parallel processing, ensuring data security, and implementing robust error handling. It also covers strategies for efficient and reliable batch processing solutions, such as transforming datasets before processing, filtering unneeded fields or records, keeping batch deployments separate from real-time deployments, and watermarking source repositories.
Mergers & Acquisitions
Nokia has acquired Rapid’s technology assets, including its API hub and research and development unit, to strengthen its network API product development and expand the network API ecosystem. The integration of Rapid's API technology with Nokia's Network as Code platform will enable operators to integrate their networks, manage API usage and lifecycle, and collaborate with Rapid's global developer base.
🤝 Solo.io Donates Open Source Gloo Gateway to CNCF
Solo.io is donating its open-source API Gateway, Gloo Gateway, to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) to aid in the development of an omni-gateway connectivity solution.
Releases
Apache Kafka has announced the release of its 3.9.0 version, the final major release to feature the deprecated Apache ZooKeeper mode. The new version introduces dynamic KRaft quorums, improved ZooKeeper migration, and production-ready tiered storage, along with several improvements to Kafka Streams and Kafka Connect.
The open-source terminal app Posting has released an update featuring 15 new themes, a keybinding assistant that can be displayed as a sidebar, and tooltips for collection browser keybinds. Other changes include automatic derivation of syntax highlighting colours, URL bar highlighting, and method colour-coding from the current theme, as well as various refinements to existing themes and reworded options in the command palette.