Automating Business Processes with APIs
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The document discusses automating business processes through APIs, emphasizing the need for integration between various SaaS applications and their underlying state models. It outlines the use of HATEOAS for managing state transitions and event sourcing, detailing the trade-offs between different event transport methods like polling, webhooks, and the concept of 'resthooks.' Additionally, it highlights the importance of event reliability and tracking changes for effective business automation.
Automating Business Processes with APIs
- 1. Automating Business Processes with APIs Saul Caganoff CTO, Sixtree @scaganoff @APIdaysAU
- 2. The Web is Now Programmable • We need to talk about consuming APIs • Each API will have thousands or millions of consumers • Enterprise digital initiatives – lean, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS • How to enable the Composable Enterprise?
- 4. SaaS - Different Levels of Specialization • Infrastructure – storage, compute, management, integration • Commodity – people, places, things, payment, security… • Functional – sales, marketing, service management, financial, human resources… • Industry – healthcare, education, supply-chain… • Your unique business value depends on how you integrate and operate all these services – The end-to-end business process
- 5. iPaaS & Cloud BPM Consumer Enterprise Cloud BPM Data Sync
- 6. This is what you want… • The business process ensemble • Coordination between process and API? • API is constrained by its underlying state model • Business Process has its own goal to achieve
- 7. This is what you get… • Each SaaS is built as an island …or with point integrations • Not designed for integration • An awful lot of polling going on “We’ve got a long way to go” - @njyx
- 10. State: the “S” in REST • Created • Composed • Addressed • Quoted • Paid • Confirmed • Declined • Cancelled
- 11. Created Populated Addressed Quoted PaidDeclined ConfirmedCancelled Add Item Add Item Remove Item Accepted Add Credit Card Details Add Address Calculate Cost Declined Add Credit Card Details Cancel Cancel Cancel Cancel Cancel
- 12. HATEOAS • State Model • Business Process = a path through the state model • API Affordances – Expose hyperlinks that represent available state transitions
- 14. HATEOAS and Events • State Model • Business Process = a path through the state model • Duality between state transitions and events • An external observer can infer the state of a resource from its event-stream – This is the essence of event-sourcing & CQRS • Affordances – Expose hyperlinks that represent available state transitions – Publish events that notify actual state transitions
- 15. Event Transports: Syndication • API exposes list of events – e.g. an RSS/atom feed • Consumers do all the hard work: – Subscription – State Management (where am I up to?) – Retries • Positives – Very easy…well-known pattern • Negatives – Polling – High latency
- 16. Event Transports: WebHooks • Service POSTs events to subscribers • Publishers do all the hard work: – Subscriber management – Consumers must provide an endpoint • Positives – Not polling, relatively lower latency • Negatives – Subscription management & guaranteed delivery must be done yourself – Reliability requires coordination between publisher & subscriber
- 17. Check out RESTHooks • Sponsored by Zapier • WebHooks with • RESTful Subscription Management resthooks.org
- 20. Affordances for Business Automation • Have an explicit State Model – With published hypermedia controls • Track changes – Allow query of changes since last “poll” • Even better - notify changes – Event streams – WebHooks or REST Hooks – Notification Services • Consider the importance of event reliability