The API Gateway Pattern for Microservices

If your company has a microservices architecture, you might consider the API Gateway Pattern for exposing your services.

The API Gateway Pattern is a way for clients of your microservices to interact with a single entry point instead of many different backend services.

Primary Benefits:

• Load Balancing: An API Gateway can distribute incoming requests efficiently across multiple backend services.
• Service Orchestration: It can aggregate results from multiple services into a single response, reducing the requests a client needs to make.
• Authentication and Security: The gateway can handle authentication and authorization, ensuring that only valid requests reach backend services. This centralizes security management and reduces the risk of unauthorized access.
• Rate Limiting and Quotas: It can enforce rate limits and quotas on usage, protecting backend services from being overwhelmed by too many requests.
• Caching: API Gateways can cache responses, reducing the load on backend services and improving response times for repeated requests.

Resources

• https://microservices.io/patterns/apigateway.html
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/welcome.html

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