Mule API - deploy to a Mule Runtime

0
votes

I am experimenting with Mule API management these days. What I come to know is we can deploy our API to one of these:

  1. A Mule Runtime
  2. An API Gateway

In the documentation, it is said that we should go with option 1 when we want to separate out the implementation of your API from the orchestration. What does it mean?

Can any one please explain in detail?

3
apimule

3 Answers

2
votes

Policy management from API Platform and analytics generation can be achieved only by using a correctly configured API Gateway, which is a superset of Mule EE (current version is API Gateway 2.1.0 which contains Mule EE 3.7.2).

Depending on your architecture you may have different solutions.

For example:

  • Proxy running on API Gateway, implementation API running somewhere else (eg. Mule EE/CE, Tomcat, cobol server, etc)
  • Proxy and implementation API running on the same API Gateway
  • Implementation API managed directly from API Platform without using the autogenerated proxies.

HTH :-)

1
votes

Not exactly sure what they mean there, because on this page: https://developer.mulesoft.com/docs/display/current/API+Gateway they also mention this:

Note that the API Gateway, because it acts as an orchestration layer for services and APIs implemented elsewhere, is technology-agnostic. You can proxy non-Mule services or APIs of any kind, as long as they expose HTTP/HTTPS, VM, Jetty, or APIkit Router endpoints. You can also proxy APIs that you design and build with API Designer and APIkit to the API Gateway to separate the orchestration from the implementation of those APIs.

So both methods technically allow you to separate API from orchestration, as your API gateway application could simply proxy another Mule application elsewhere that performs the orchestration. But my understanding of the two options are:

The API gateway is a limited offering that allows you to use a subset of Mule's connectors, transports and modules such as ApiKit and HTTP, it allows you to expose and API then use http to connect to whatever backend systems you want as a proxy and perform the orchestration in the API layer.

By using the Mule runtime operation, it gives you much more flexibility and allows you to compose as many applications as you want using the full range of connectors etc. and separate out the different aspects of your applications into as many layers as you want as separately deployable entities that you can deploy to on-premise standalone instances or Cloudhub etc.

0
votes

@Ryan answer is more or less on the mark, however if you do choose the Mule ESB offering you will loose out on the API Management and governance functionality that API gateway provides OOTB.

These include

  • Lets you enforce runtime policies and collect data for analytics

  • Applies policies to APIs or endpoints around security, throttling,
    rate limiting, and more

  • Extends PingFederate to serve as identity management and OAuth
    provider for your APIs

  • Lets you require or restrict certain behaviors in a few simple steps

  • Lets you add or remove policies at runtime with no API downtime

  • Manages access to your API by issuing contract keys

  • Monitors the API to confirm it is meeting all contract terms

  • Ensures compliance with service level agreements (SLAs)

In my opinion go with API Gateway/Manager if your API will be consumed my third party developers with whom you might not have too many interactions (think public API's) else Mule ESB should be good.

You should be able to migrate from Mule ESB to API Manager (and vice versa) also easily if you need to, so I do not think you will get locked into your decision

PS: Content copied from here