What is an API
An API is a piece of code that creates an access point to an application or a system. It's an intermediary that accepts requests from the outside, securely passes them to the system and then communicates the response back. The system remains a black box. The advantage - no need to know how the system works and processes requests, moreover, the system can be replaced entirely but the request-response chain will continue working perfectly well as long as the API knows how to 'talk' to the new system.
How does MuleSoft work?
MuleSoft offers numerous pre-built APIs for all types of applications and systems. By placing an API in front of your old legacy systems, you immediately acquire a modern way to interact with this system without knowing how it operates. If all your on-premise or cloud systems have an intermediary API, called System APIs, that can understand the modern system's language, then they can communicate by exchanging data. All MuleSoft APIs are organised in the network and are assigned different roles. More complex Process APIs are responsible for processing the extracted data and performing some logic, while Experience APIs deal with formatting the data to be presented to different media devices like desktops, mobiles, apps etc. The Anypoint platform is unique in its ability not only to manage and orchestrate API-led integration but also to develop and execute APIs.
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Mule ESB (Enterprise Service Bus)
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is fundamentally an architecture. It is a set of rules and principles for integrating numerous applications over a bus-like infrastructure. The core concept of the ESB architecture is connecting different applications by putting a communication bus between them and then enable each application to talk to this bus. This approach decouples systems, allowing them to communicate without dependency on or knowledge of other participants.
Mule, the runtime engine of Anypoint Platform, is a flexible ESB solution that helps to increase agility by implementing a simple, well defined, "pluggable" system that scales well.
What is Design Center in Anypoint platform?
Anypoint Design Center includes a web-based tool where MuleSoft developers design and create API specifications and fragments (API Designer). Once your API specification or fragment is ready to be shared with the rest of the organisation, you publish it to Anypoint Exchange for testing and approval. This development approach is called Spec-Driven. Before moving into the API implementation phase, it's crucial to get the 'sign-off' from the business and other teams involved. They will test the API returning mocked results, provide initial feedback and validate requirements. Anypoint Exchange is a virtual market to share, discover and reuse APIs, connectors, templates, etc.
The other part of the Design Center,Flow Designer, is used to build Mule Applications that connect systems into workflows.
This diagram illustrates the relationship between design tools
and other MuleSoft products (source: MuleSoft documentation).
How do I secure APIs and integration in MuleSoft?
Anypoint Security is responsible for defending your APIs and integrations. MuleSoft takes security very seriously. A layered approach to protection ensures tight access control on a lower level of individual APIs while enforcing global policies and defending from external attacks.
What is MuleSoft Anypoint studio?
After you created your API specification, published it to Anypoint Exchange and received the 'green light', you are ready to start the implementation. Anypoint Studio is a desktop integrated development environment (IDE) for building your APIs. To speed up the development process and minimise potential errors, the Studio offers numerous ready-to-use modules for common integration purposes.
Anypoint Management center
Management Center is the operational hub to manage, monitor, audit and analyse APIs' performance. It comprises 3 components:
- Runtime Manager allows you to deploy and manage applications and monitor their performance.
- API Manager plays a very important role, it enables security policies to be applied to control access and unlock data with API gateways.
- Analytics provides visibility into API traffic and provides performance metrics.
What is Anypoint Exchange?
MuleSoft Anypoint Exchange is like a Sunday market for APIs. There is a large central market - MuleSoft Exchange, and local markets hosted by organisations for internal use only. This is the place where you submit your API specification or fragment, and it is the first place to check for any integration assets. You can find various templates, connections, fragments to reuse in your application to save time and effort.
Runtime engine & services
Mule runtime engine is the heart and soul of Anypoint Platform. this is where the APIs are run from and data is processed.
API-led connectivity & its advantages
API-connectivity is an architectural methodology driven by MuleSoft to connect data to applications through reusable APIs. This is a big shift away from notorious point-to-point integrations. Using an API-led connectivity approach you can create a flexible and scalable network of APIs. One of the top benefits of API-led connectivity is reusability; for new projects, you can reuse many of the existing assets and APIs to save time and effort.
MuleSoft recognises 3 types of APIs depending on the role they play: System, Process and Experience.
- System APIs are responsible for 'talking' directly to back-end systems. Their main role is to hide the complexity of the underlying systems.
- Process APIs merge and process data delivered by one or multiple System APIs for a specific business purpose. For example, to deliver a 360 customer view, the process retrieves information from various systems. The data has to be merged and processed before it is passed to Experience APIs.
- Experience APIs are complex APIs that combine information from multiple APIs but their role is to deliver this information to a specific channel. By a channel, we mean a mobile app, your partner organisation for data-sharing, internal processes or even robots (RPA).
Application Network
A way of connecting applications, data and devices through APIs that expose some or all of their assets and data on the network. That network allows other consumers from other parts of the business to come in, discover and use those assets.
DataWeave
DataWeave is a MuleSoft expression language for accessing and transforming data that travels through a MuleSoft application.
