what is api management
API Management is the process of designing, creating, publishing, documenting, securing, and monitoring APIs in a scalable environment. It’s about the overall administration of the lifecycle and use of APIs in an organization.
An API Management solution, also known as an API Gateway, is a tool that serves as a proxy to your APIs and provides several common functionalities:
- Design and Development Support: It helps in the process of designing and building APIs, providing features like an interface to develop APIs, testing support, and deployment options.
- Security: It provides features to secure your APIs using standard methods like API keys, OAuth tokens, JWT (JSON Web Tokens), and others to ensure that only authorized users can access your APIs.
- Traffic Management and Scaling: It controls the traffic to your APIs, handling aspects like rate limiting, throttling, and autoscaling to ensure that your API can handle large numbers of requests without crashing.
- Analytics and Monitoring: It provides insights into how your APIs are being used, tracking API usage, performance, errors, and more.
- Documentation and Developer Engagement: It provides a portal for developers to learn about your APIs, access documentation, and test the API’s endpoints. This makes it easier for developers to understand and use your APIs.
- Version Control and Lifecycle Management: It helps in managing different versions of your APIs and handles the full lifecycle of an API, from creation to deprecation.
By using an API Management solution, organizations can ensure that their APIs are consistently implemented and comply with standards and regulations. This helps in maintaining the quality and reliability of APIs, and enhances the ability to monitor and analyze API usage and performance.
