The latest News and Information on API Development, Management, Monitoring, and related technologies.
Whether you're a business that relies on Amazon reviews and seller feedback or planning a much-needed holiday through your favorite travel comparison site, everyday activities like these wouldn't be impossible without APIs. An integral part of app development, API technology is interwoven into a rich tapestry of popular applications that companies and consumers use daily. Without them, there would be no smartphones, social media, or instant messaging.
Continuous integration (CI) is the process of integrating changes from multiple contributors to create a single software project. A key component for a smooth CI pipeline is testing. Tests prove that the code does exactly what it says on the tin and that it’s safe to merge the code into the central repository. Tests also anticipate edge cases and ensure that the code handles such cases in a deterministic manner.
Today’s modern applications are made up of thousands of loosely connected private and publicly exposed APIs, each serving a specific function. This dynamic API landscape, in combination with the decentralized nature of microservice development, can be overwhelmingly challenging to manage—let alone govern or secure adequately. API sprawl is often created as a result, leading to fragmented or nonexistent internal API documentation, knowledge bases, and toolsets.
As your applications grow, your teams may be faced with managing a complex, expanding mesh of potentially thousands of loosely connected APIs—each one a new point of failure that can be difficult to track and patch. API sprawl comes naturally in rapidly expanding, distributed applications, and the difficulty of maintaining centralized knowledge and toolsets for your APIs creates friction when teams need to leverage APIs they don’t own.
When it comes to building and delivering modern web applications, the importance of continuous integration cannot be overemphasized. With the rapid pace of software development, ensuring that every change in your codebase is thoroughly tested and seamlessly integrated into your project is essential for maintaining a robust and dependable application.