A monolith is an application that is developed and deployed as a single unit.
Its components are tightly coupled within a single codebase, and they often share resources, such as databases or libraries.
Monolithic architectures have a long history and are still present in many legacy systems, but they also present several challenges.
For instance, monoliths must be scaled as a whole, even if only a single component requires additional resources.
They can also lead to longer development and deployment cycles, as the entire application must be rebuilt and redeployed for a change to take effect.
Many teams are addressing these challenges by adopting microservices or mesoservices, which are smaller, more independent, and more scalable.
A microservice is a small service that performs a single business function and communicates with other microservices through APIs.
Each microservice is managed independently of one another, which can speed up the development and deployment process and make it easier to scale and maintain the system.
Microservices are often designed to be stateless, which means they do not maintain any session state between requests.
Statelessness enables horizontal scalability, in which more instances of the same microservice can be added to handle increased load.
Microservices can also be written in different programming languages and deployed on different platforms, which makes it easy to use the right tool for the job.
However, microservices also come with some challenges, such as increased complexity and reduced visibility.
For instance, a microservice architecture consists of many small services that communicate with one another, which means that a small change in one microservice can have significant consequences on the microservices it interacts with.
The distributed nature of a microservice architecture also makes it harder to test, monitor, and debug any issues that may arise.
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(1/3) Private APIs, also known as internal APIs, are used to connect different software components within a single organization, and they are not available for third-party use.
(2/3) For instance, a social media application might have a private API that handles the login workflow, another private API that handles the feed, and another private API that facilitates communication between users.
DocuSign's API seamlessly integrates DocuSign’s robust electronic signature capabilities into your applications, transforming traditional document workflows into efficient digital processes.
Zoho Sign offers a comprehensive API for integrating their trusted and legally binding eSignature solution. You can leverage Zoho Sign’s API to simplify document signing, automate workflows, and enhance the efficiency of your applications.
There are many ways to test an API, and each one serves a unique purpose.
The list represents four of the most common approaches, but there are endless variations within each category that teams can use to build a customized API testing strategy.
1. Contract testing
An API contract is a human- and machine-readable representation of an API's intended functionality.
It establishes a single source of truth for what each request and response should look like and forms the basis of SLAs between producers and consumers.
Both private and public API catalogs make it easier for API consumers to find the APIs that meet their needs, but each type of catalog has several distinct benefits.
A private API catalog is a unified hub for every internal API within an organization.
These catalogs provide complete visibility into an organization's overall API landscape, which benefits developers and business leaders alike.
REST (Representational State Transfer) is an architectural style for building web services and APIs.
In a RESTful architecture, resources are identified by URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers), and operations are performed on those resources using standard HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE.
An API gateway is a server that acts as an entry point for clients to access and interact with multiple microservices and backend systems.
API gateways are an important component of microservice-based architectures, as they provide a centralized point of control for many common tasks that would otherwise be performed by each individual microservice.