The document discusses the challenges of data integration in the context of the modern API economy, highlighting that while REST APIs facilitate lightweight integration, they do not resolve data integration issues. It emphasizes the need for scalable and microservices-based data transformation solutions, moving away from outdated middleware-centric approaches. Vendors like SnapLogic are showcased as examples of modern, cloud-centric data integration technologies essential for handling today's complex data environments.

1. Intellyx White Paper
Copyright © 2016 Intellyx LLC | +1-617-517-4999 | agility@intellyx.com | www.intellyx.com
The API Lie
Jason Bloomberg
August 29, 2016
Welcome to the API Economy! Now that we’ve worked all the kinks out of RESTful APIs, we now have
seamless interoperability among all manner of endpoints, from legacy enterprise web services to
microservices.
If only it were that easy. True, vendors have largely
risen to the management and governance
challenges such APIs face (although more work is
still needed around microservice interface
governance), but the elephant in the integration
room remains: data integration.
Back in the web services days, we offloaded the role
of data formats to XML schemas, and leveraged ESBs
or XML appliances to perform complex XSLT or
XQuery transformations.
This heavyweight, middleware-centric approach to data integration served many of our needs at the
time, but today’s cloudified, containerized world needs far more lightweight, scalable approaches to
data integration.
To fill this need, along came REST, promising lightweight, web-centric, cloud-friendly integration. Add a
REST-centric API management tool, and you’d be a full-fledged member of the API Economy, right?

2. Architecting Agility™
Copyright © 2016 Intellyx LLC | +1-617-517-4999 | agility@intellyx.com | www.intellyx.com
Just one problem: REST never did handle data integration. After all, REST is web-centric: it provides for
Internet media types (formerly known as MIME types) that can include metadata representations of
data formats – but leaves the rest to you.
In other words, in the REST world, data integration is largely roll your own. At least in the web services
days we had XML schemas to keep us honest. Today, schemalessness is the way to go – providing the
lightweight flexibility of JSON, but kicking the data integration can down the road.
The missing piece of this puzzle, just as it was in the web services days, is data transformation. Unlike
the ESB-centric 2000s, however, today’s data transformations must be lightweight and scalable.
Transformations that can run as microservices themselves, and thus can appear anywhere in a hybrid
cloud architecture, as opposed to being locked away inside centralized middleware or physical
appliances.
To succeed in the API Economy, therefore, you must look beyond
API management to data integration as well – without falling for
warmed-over middleware-centric integration technologies from
the last decade. Instead, look to vendors like SnapLogic who built
data integration from the ground up to be cloud-centric:
horizontally scalable and microservices-based.
Complex data transformations have always been processor
intensive, which is why we often offloaded them to dedicated
appliances. SnapLogic, in contrast, leverages the horizontal
scalability of the cloud along with the power of modern
transformation technology to offer real-time data transformation
suitable even for today’s web scale data streaming applications.
The API lie is that data integration is an easy problem to solve. It’s
not. That’s why it’s so important to leverage modern data
integration technology for big data challenges, streaming data
applications, or increasingly routine hybrid cloud integration.
SnapLogic is an Intellyx client. Intellyx retains full editorial control over the content of this article. Image credit:
mhagemann.
TO SUCCEED IN THE API
ECONOMY, YOU MUST
LOOK BEYOND API
MANAGEMENT TO DATA
INTEGRATION AS WELL –
WITHOUT FALLING FOR
WARMED-OVER
MIDDLEWARE-CENTRIC
INTEGRATION
TECHNOLOGIES FROM
THE LAST DECADE.