By Matthew Reinbold in Newsletter — Aug 6, 2019

Net API Notes for 2019/08/07

Summer! Summer! Summer!

Some editions of this newsletter are overstuffed, containing numerous interesting pieces that combine into a narrative more significant than the sum of individual parts. Then there were the past couple weeks, where many of the stories evaporated under scrutiny.

Still, there are a handful of essential items worth noting. Let's get to them:

NOTES

WARDLEY MAPS, IT STRATEGY, AND MICROSERVICES

Successfully transforming a monolith to a microservices is not a trivial thing. Many a team have tried, only to discover that they've incurred increased architectural complexity while only gaining marginal benefit.

Susanne Kaiser's conference talk, "Preparing for a Microservices Journey" provides a high-level visualization of all the necessary components at play in a "modern development stack". She, rightly, points out how daunting all these dependencies can be. However, Susanne then goes further and shows how usage of Wardley Maps (among other things) can be used to guide decision making.

It is very much worth your time to watch.

OH HEY! MORE MICROSERVICE DECOMPOSITION PATTERNS

While we're talking both microservices and video, Sam Newman has a recording on YouTube. Entitled "Monolith Decomposition Patterns", he pragmatically approaches how to create microservices in the real world, not a "greenfield" architecture. Check out the video if you are interested in learning more about:

Single Process Monolith
"Modular" Monoliths
3rd Party Monoliths
Distributed Monoliths

Sam, whom you might recognize as the author of the seminal work, "Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems", is writing a new title: "Monoliths to Microservices: Evolutionary Patterns to Transform Your Monolith".

I'm looking forward to that title.

APIS AND DATA PRIVACY

Wallowing in technical minutia can be fun. However, worth remembering is that APIs are not just an architectural pattern but also a business consideration. Alison Jarris, in her piece "Facebook, privacy, and the Delicate Data Dance" not only discusses the current landscape but gives a brief history of notable API closures and restrictions based on changing market factors.

It pairs nicely with Matt McLarty's blog post on The Ethics of APIs. When prepping (or revisiting) your API strategy, be sure to account for these growing concerns.

MILESTONES

Tyk has taken a small round of investment to accelerate expansion in the US.
Luis Weir has published "Enterprise API Management: Design and Deliver Valuable Business APIs". I look forward to getting this and comparing/contrasting with O'Reilly's "Continuous API Management".
Erik Wilde points out that rate limiting is a popular technique, so why not formalize it in header fields? If that sounds like your jam, there's a pre-draft available to be iterated on.
An API vulnerability in older Lenovo NAS (or Network Attached Storage) devices was discovered. Be sure to update that firmware!
Julia Evans posted a very approachable infographic helping explain caching headers.

WRAPPING UP

Thoughtful guidance is a seasonal thing. The stream of new work dries to a trickle under late summer sun and 2019 is trending no different. As a result, and as has been the case in previous years, I'll be taking 3-4 weeks off from compiling notes this August. I'll be back in your inboxes in September.

If you're hard-pressed for some long-form writing, I published the slides and script for my workshop "Agile Antipatterns". There are also still a number of notable in-person API events worth checking out on NetAPI.events. If there is a meetup, hackathon, or conference that is missing, reply to this message or send me a email directly and I'll be sure to add it.

Finally, thank you to my Patreons. I've got a unique set of design resources in mind as a reward for these folks. However, more on that in a future issue.

Till next time,

Matthew @libel_vox and matthewreinbold.com