APIs: The Problems with Eating your Own Dog Food
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SoundCloud's web and mobile properties are all built on top of our Public API. While building the user-interface atop a RESTful layer has proven itself a sound decision, the one-size-fits-all nature of a Public API is not ideal. When it comes to data transfer and HTTP resource modelling, each client has their own needs, and in the end hacks and workarounds have to be implemented in both clients and servers. Feature development also becomes complicated, with coordination between multiple teams required for every single little feature. SoundCloud is now moving to a different model, where clients have their own façade APIs, modelled after their core characteristics and needs. We are also using the architecture to break away from Conway’s Law and building more cross-functional, end-to-end teams. From: http://gotocon.com/berlin-2013/presentation/APIs:%20The%20Problems%20with%20Eating%20your%20Own%20Dog%20food To implement this, a lot of change in our architecture, tech stack and development processes were required. In this talk we will explore the challenges we had, the options we investigated and how ultimately SoundCloud decided to move forward.
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APIs: The Problems with Eating your Own Dog Food
- The problems with eating your own dog food Phil Calçado SoundCloud Thursday, October 17, 13
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- >11 hours of audio uploaded every minute Thursday, October 17, 13
- ~200 million users every month Thursday, October 17, 13
- Thursday, October 17, 13
- Thursday, October 17, 13
- http://bit ly/tech-behind-new-twittercom Thursday, October 17, 13
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- Just before the beta release Thursday, October 17, 13
- http://bit ly/improving-performance-twittercom Thursday, October 17, 13
- Thursday, October 17, 13
- Ship it? Thursday, October 17, 13
- Ship it! (just overprovision the api) Thursday, October 17, 13
- ~3 back-end requests Thursday, October 17, 13
- ~159 back-end requests Thursday, October 17, 13
- First to break were the haproxy Thursday, October 17, 13
- Then memcached Thursday, October 17, 13
- Then Rails/MySQL Thursday, October 17, 13
- Rails won’t go away need faster api Thursday, October 17, 13
- SoundCloud.com Thursday, October 17, 13
- Sounds Social Activity & Sets Graph Stream Premium Search API Features Thursday, October 17, 13
- Social Graph Sounds & Sets API Activity Stream Premium Features Thursday, October 17, 13 Search
- 100% 75% 50% 25% 0% Original Database Thursday, October 17, 13 Services Extracted Other HTTP
- 100% 75% 50% 25% 0% Original Database Thursday, October 17, 13 Services Extracted Other HTTP
- about the same, tbh 100% 75% 50% 25% 0% Original Database Thursday, October 17, 13 Services Extracted Other HTTP
- Rails won’t go away need faster Rails Thursday, October 17, 13
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- lots of I/O concurrency friendly Thursday, October 17, 13
- Rails doesn’t like parallelism Thursday, October 17, 13
- time Thursday, October 17, 13
- Can we make it like concurrency? Thursday, October 17, 13
- time Thursday, October 17, 13
- time Thursday, October 17, 13
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- What else is there? Thursday, October 17, 13
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- time Thursday, October 17, 13
- time Thursday, October 17, 13
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- What about the network? Thursday, October 17, 13
- GET /tracks/trending/music Thursday, October 17, 13
- GET /tracks/trending/music GET /tracks/genres Thursday, October 17, 13
- GET /tracks/trending/music GET /tracks/genres GET /tracks/genres/jazz Thursday, October 17, 13
- GET /tracks/trending/music GET /tracks/genres GET /tracks/genres/jazz GET /tracks/123 Thursday, October 17, 13
- What about a custom API? Thursday, October 17, 13
- GET /tracks/suggested Thursday, October 17, 13
- GET /tracks/suggested GET /tracks/123 Thursday, October 17, 13
- api.soundcloud.com iOS Thursday, October 17, 13 Android Desktop Widget 3rd Party
- api-mobile iOS Thursday, October 17, 13 api web api-partn Android Desktop Widget 3rd Party
- What comes next? Thursday, October 17, 13
- Stop babysitting Rails Thursday, October 17, 13
- Enable & empower app devs Thursday, October 17, 13
- “Experience based” api? Thursday, October 17, 13
- phil calçado http://philcalcado.com @pcalcado www.soundcloud.com Thursday, October 17, 13