Utilizing RESTful APIs In The Cloud
Just like Cloud, RESTful APIs have provided a way for system architects to execute services which can seamlessly scale and have modular architecture, ease of integration and extensibility. RESTful APIs are the way to go when it comes to the Cloud because of their ability to deplete latency, security and smart encapsulation of the legacy systems. Cloud based architectures can easily be integrated with the RESTful API’s because of the platform independent approach being used.
Developers prefer the usage of RESTful API with the Cloud primarily because of the ability of RESTful services to use lightweight interfaces. This does not only decrease the resource allocation problems in Cloud based communication, cost effectiveness and productivity of the overall system is also elevated. A Cloud is distributed system architecture, thus the RESTful API’s are the best solution for the enterprise level consumption of remote data. The ability of the RESTful services to integrate and interoperate the remote resources is just malignant. JSON and XML are supported by RESTful API’s which are being considered as a standard in the remote calls because of their modular approach and fast response time. REST has always been the preference for the developers because of the fact that SOAP based protocols are always difficult to implement because of their complex technical granularities. Meaningful error messages while development of the services using the REST API’s is always helpful for the developer. REST API always provide comprehensive documentation like description of supported operations, examples that include the request, all headers, and any response, Required Default values, error codes.
Famous RESTful API’s include GoGrid API , Rackspace, Amazon EC2 and Sun. Sun and Rackspace API services are considered as purely based on RESTful architecture because of their peculiar protocol for data communication and JSON parsing techniques. The location transparency and scalability benefits of these API’s are of great utility in the cloud computing
There are some pre-requisites and nuances that must be inculcated and sub served before considering the large scale migration or deployment of the RESTful services in the cloud computing. The organizational workforce must be aware of the challenges and complexity of the API based architectures. State of the art frameworks and technologies like Web 2.0 or SOA technologies ,cloud delivery (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) along with the integration of public, hybrid and private cloud models are a must if you are giving a thought to use the RESTful cloud based services.
By Salman UI Haq
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