1. How do Async APIs Survive
in a REST World?
Luca Ferrari
EMEA Solution Architect
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2. Past and present
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Some of the topics I recently presented
about:
Luca Ferrari
3scale ...
now Red Hat ...
now IBM

3. What is Async API ?
The model
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4. Why Async APIs ?
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from …

5. Why Async APIs ?
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… to

6. Why Async APIs ?
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example: Kafka
Kafka Strengths:
● Real Time Data Pipeline
● High-throughput
● Fault-tolerant
● Low Latency
● Scalability
Kafka Limits:
Kafka is not optimized to provide API consumers with friendly access to real time
data.
Difficult to expose and re-use API oriented tools for Kafka

7. Why Async APIs ?
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example: Kafka
Kafka Strengths:
● Real Time Data Pipeline
● High-throughput
● Fault-tolerant
● Low Latency
● Scalability
Kafka Limits:
Kafka is not optimized to provide API consumers with friendly access to real time
data.
Difficult to expose and re-use API oriented tools for Kafka

8. What is AsyncAPI ?
AsyncAPI and Open API Spec
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● AsyncAPI - derived from OpenAPI
● Similarities:
○ Definitions - similar schemas
○ Well-defined set of operations (HTTP methods vs publish/subscribe)
○ Similar security models for web interactions
● Differences
○ Semantic differences between clients (publisher/subscriber vs
client/server)
○ Different concepts (e.g. cookies)
○ Different data payloads

9. Why AsyncAPI ?
Features
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❖ Being able to describe:
➢ Event-driven microservices
➢ IoT APIs
➢ Streaming APIs
❖ Some supported protocols:
➢ MQTT
➢ AMQP
➢ WebSocket
➢ Kafka
➢ Stomp
➢ NATS
➢ HTTP
➢ JMS

10. Kafka condensed
All the moving parts
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11. REST or ASYNC ?
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Request-reply vs. event-driven
Synchronous & ephemeral
Low composability
Low tolerance to failure
Best practices evolved as REST
Asynchronous and persistent
Decoupled
Highly composable
High tolerance to failure
Best practices are still evolving

12. REST and ASYNC !
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Common concerns
● API contracts
○ Differentiated levels of service
○ Security: who can consume what topic, what operation
● Ease of consumption
○ Search a catalog of Topics, labels
○ ‘Try it out’s for data formats
● Monitoring, Analytics
● Monetization
○ What to price?
○ Who does what today?

13. Demo !
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14. Demo setup
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HTML5
page

15. Demo setup
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HTML5
page
API
Gateway

16. Demo setup
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HTML5
page
API
Gateway
API
Manager

17. Demo setup
17
HTML5
page
API
Gateway
API
Manager
HTTP
Bridge
AMQ
Streams

18. Demo setup
18
HTML5
page
API
Gateway
API
Manager
HTTP
Bridge
AMQ
Streams

19. Demo setup
19
HTML5
page
API
Gateway
API
Manager
HTTP
Bridge
AMQ
Streams AsyncAPI

20. Demo setup
20
HTML5
page
API
Gateway
API
Manager
HTTP
Bridge
AMQ
Streams AsyncAPI
NodeJS
client

21. Demo setup
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HTML5
page
API
Gateway
API
Manager
HTTP
Bridge
AMQ
Streams AsyncAPI
NodeJS
client
Producer
Consumer

22. OpenShift Container Platform
Demo setup
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HTML5
page
API
Gateway
API
Manager
HTTP
Bridge
AMQ
Streams AsyncAPI
NodeJS
client

23. Closing
Takeaway notes
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▸ Difference between Sync and Async APIs
▸ Objective of AsyncAPI project
▸ Sync and Async APIs can play together

24. Closing
Takeaway notes
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▸ Difference between Sync and Async APIs
▸ Objective of AsyncAPI project
▸ Sync and Async APIs can play together
Go out and be part of the community !
https://github.com/strimzi
https://github.com/asyncapi

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