Competition for customer loyalty, a desire for new revenue streams, and demand for supply chain resiliency are just three of the drivers behind enterprises accelerating their digital initiatives. APIs now serve as the primary building blocks for these efforts—assembling data, events, and services from within the organisation, throughout ecosystems, and across devices. But integrated legacy systems and support for new event-driven architectures also play critical roles in enabling timely, meaningful digital interactions in response to customer actions. To support these demands, WSO2 has added significant new capabilities to WSO2 API Manager 4.0, available today.

Some 18.2 trillion API calls run through WSO2 API Manager each year. The latest release of WSO2’s industry-leading, cloud-native open-source API management platform:

• Facilitates streaming integration and event-driven architecture (EDA) implementations via support for streaming APIs, asynchronous WebSocket APIs, the Server-Sent Events (SSE) messaging protocol, and webhooks.
• Provides the first generally available, full implementation of the AsyncAPI specification, the open standard API format for event-driven APIs.
• Incorporates all WSO2 Enterprise Integrator functionality to provide a single, comprehensive solution for API management and API-first integration.
• Adds a new Service Catalog that enables developers to discover a given service and create a managed API with a single click.
• Adds a new API Revisioning feature that enables developers to revise and test an API or API product without affecting current deployments.
• Offers rich new cloud-based analytics to let users see how their APIs and applications are being used by consumers.

“Consumers have high expectations for their online interactions at home and at work, making it more important than ever for enterprises to more effectively create and manage APIs that access the data so critical to great digital experiences,” said WSO2 CTO Eric Newcomer. “WSO2 API Manager 4.0 takes API management to the next level, especially for the event-driven architectures that are underpinning next-gen apps. We are proud to be the first vendor to ship full support for the new AsyncAPI specification standard, which is emerging as a significant enabler for reacting quickly to business state changes.”

Facilitating Event-Driven Architectures

WSO2 API Manager 4.0 adds new capabilities that facilitate the implementation of streaming and event-driven architectures, including support in five key areas: the AsyncAPI specification, streaming APIs, Server-Sent Events protocol, WebSocket APIs, and webhook APIs.

AsyncAPI Specification. Starting as an adaptation of the OpenAPI specification, the AsyncAPI specification defines a standard API format for event-driven APIs that is compatible with any event-driven protocol, representing a major advance in the world of API standardisation. With Version 4.0, WSO2 API Manager is the first to provide full out-of-the-box AsyncAPI support for WebSockets, webhooks, and SSE. AsyncAPI support for additional protocols is available via WSO2’s adapters for Kafka, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, and others.

Streaming APIs. In Version 4.0, a developer can expose an event stream as a managed API, and all quality-of-service aspects, such as security, access control, and throttling can be applied on top of the streaming APIs.

Server-Sent Events Protocol. Through support for the SSE messaging protocol in the API Gateway, Version 4.0 enables developers to integrate an SSE backend with an API in order to receive events from it. Now API developers can manage their SSE backend for monetisation, security, and access control, and more.

WebSocket API. WebSocket APIs provide the ability to send events (messages) continuously in a full-duplex manner over a channel that is established once, making it possible to receive event-driven messages without having to poll the server for a reply.

Webhook APIs. With the webhook API support in Version 4.0, API developers can create events for API management capabilities, such as monetisation, monitoring, security, and access control. API consumers can then register for the topics they prefer in order to receive event notifications via the registered callback URL.

One Platform for API Management, Integration, and Event-Driven Architecture

WSO2 API Manager delivers a seamless, end-to-end API management experience while addressing all the requirements of API creators, product managers, and consumers. In Version 4.0, WSO2 API Manager also inherits all the capabilities of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, the open-source hybrid integration platform that provides a graphical drag-and-drop flow designer and a configuration-driven approach to building low-code integration solutions for cloud- and container-native projects. It is supported by more than 150 connectors in WSO2’s Connector Store and makes it easy to add integrations to APIs.

With the recognition that different disciplines require different capabilities and workflows, WSO2 API Manager 4.0 offers three distinct profiles:

• API Management covers all the full API management life cycle capabilities traditionally provided by WSO2 API Manager.
• Micro Integrator supports the many enterprises that need flexibility in how they implement integrations. It enables newer microservices-style architectural approaches to integration. Additionally, it supports traditional centralised (ESB-style) integration architectures.
• Streaming Integrator is used to implement streaming extract, transform load (ETL), and change data capture (CDC), as well as process large files and real-time APIs. It can also connect to and enable event-driven architectures with distributed streaming systems, such as Kafka and Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS).

The new Service Catalog in WSO2 API Manager 4.0 publishes services created using Micro Integrator or Streaming Integrator along with other services. By going to the Service Catalog, an API developer can easily discover all the available services and create a managed API with one click of a button. Multiple APIs can be created from a single service, and the API developer can choose to keep APIs up to date with any changes made to the underlying services.

Applying CI/CD to API Versions

As enterprises monetise their APIs and API products, more IT organisations are seeking to apply continuous development and continuous delivery (CI/CD) for deploying new versions. The API Revisioning feature in WSO2 API Manager 4.0 enables API developers to create and test a new version of an existing API or API product without affecting current API deployments. The API runtime-related artefacts are stored separately and then deployed for the specified API revision in a test environment in order to validate any changes before publishing them and providing access to API consumers.

Cloud-based Analytics

WSO2 API Manager 4.0 adds rich new cloud-based analytics to let developers and managers see how their APIs and applications are being used by consumers. Users can simply create an account in the WSO2 Cloud and connect to the analytics to view application request volumes, latency breakdowns, access patterns, error behaviours, and other metrics. Additionally, enterprises can continue to take advantage of out-of-the-box support for Google Analytics provided by WSO2 API Manager, as well as plug-in third-party analytics systems.

Enhancing Deployments and Security 

In addition to the new features, WSO2 API Manager 4.0 extends support for widely adopted architectures for modern applications, including serverless computing, containers, and microservices. Existing capabilities that have been enhanced in the newest release include WSO2 API Microgateway; support for gRPC, GraphQL, and native Kubernetes; among others.

Because API security is critical to protecting digital businesses, their customers, and their partners, WSO2 also has enhanced the robust policy-based controls for authentication and authorisation in WSO2 API Manager 4.0. These capabilities are based on the technologies that power the WSO2 Identity Server, which enterprises can optionally add to gain full, developer-focused identity and access management (IAM). WSO2 also offers open-source extensions that enable enterprises to take advantage of the artificial intelligence (AI) powered API cybersecurity of PingIntelligence for APIs and 42Crunch API Security Audit for API definitions.

Availability and Support

WSO2 API Manager 4.0 is available today as an open-source product released under the Apache License 2.0. The product is backed by WSO2 Subscription, which features access to WSO2 Update for continuous delivery of bug fixes, security updates, and performance enhancements, along with WSO2 Support for 24x7 support. Unified pricing means customers can simply buy a WSO2 Subscription and choose the hosting model—cloud, on-premises, or hybrid—based on their preferences. Details on WSO2 Subscription are available at https://wso2.com/subscription; information on WSO2 Consulting Services can be found at https://wso2.com/consulting.