DreamFactory is a REST API Management platform, as well as a leading provider of instant SQL server APIs. The software offers many features that make it easy to set up, including being deployable with Docker, Kubernetes, or directly from GitHub through automated installers. APIs are a critical component of digital transformation because they enable you to expose your business activities and realize the full potential of your digital assets. APIs make it simple to connect your digital assets to other essential business systems, promoting innovation and cooperation. They assist you in achieving business agility by establishing unique procedures and integrating with potential business initiatives. It also enables you to interact with your business system in a variety of ways, including through mobile or voice apps.
APIs are rapidly becoming a significant element of the digital world, as they play a critical role in the interactions between businesses of all kinds. With the rising use of APIs, it’s more critical than ever to make sure they’re properly maintained.
In this blog, we will look at the key benefits of using the DreamFactory, one of the best REST API management software.
Table of Contents
What is API Management?
API administration is a broad word that encompasses a wide range of organizational functions, including the creation, distribution, control, troubleshooting, and analysis of programmable application interfaces. These capabilities are centralized in a secure interface that can be accessed by anyone in the company.
API administration is a necessary component for every program that uses APIs. Any company must make sure that its APIs are up to date, safe, and functional.
DreamFactory is an open-source REST API platform. You may use DreamFactory to quickly create, protect, and deploy REST APIs. Clients can use DreamFactory native connectors to quickly develop APIs and use the Universal Connector to mount third-party APIs. To adapt your app requirements, use API-based joins to combine several SQL tables and offer a uniform JSON result.
Use DreamFactory’s built-in security controls to restrict access and use of specific APIs down to the table and row level. Finally, get a consolidated and consistent admin view of all your services.
What are the key benefits of using DreamFactory REST API Management Platform?
The following are the benefits of using DreamFactory.
Instant API creation
DreamFactory is an open-source REST API platform that automatically builds and manages REST APIs for mobile, web, and IoT applications. DreamFactory immediately builds a versatile, comprehensive, and well-documented REST API endpoint from any SQL or NoSQL database, file storage system, or external HTTP or SOAP service. Instead, of hand-coding APIs for every new development project, concentrate on building your applications.
When you use DreamFactory as a backend service to your application, you no longer need to write server-side code to build APIs for databases or integrate with other external data sources you may have. The DreamFactory platform gives instant, live access to all data sources connected to it through dynamic REST APIs.
DreamFactory provides the following key benefits:
- Eliminates the need for custom backend coding. Create secure REST APIs instantly from nearly any data source with just a few clicks in the admin console.
- Supports multiple environments. Deploy locally on-premise or in the cloud (AWS, Azure).
- Open-source software. The core of DreamFactory is completely open-source under the Apache license.
Deep SQL support
The most extensive REST API for SQL databases is provided by DreamFactory. The API parameters for complex filters, pagination, sorting, related table joins, virtual foreign keys, calculations, aggregation, rollback, commit, and more are all automatically generated REST endpoints for data, schema, functions, stored procedures, and API parameters for complex filters, pagination, sorting, related table joins, virtual foreign keys, calculations, aggregation, rollback, commit, and more.
DreamFactory is the perfect backend to build your next-generation Single Page Applications in AngularJS. With our rich set of technologies that integrate with AngularJS and over 200 REST APIs out of the box with the click of a button, your team can start building your next-generation apps today.
DreamFactory also has integrated user management and user-based access control. This allows you to manage who has access to which resources on your server. You can also use Active Directory or LDAP as your user store which allows you to leverage all of the users you already have in your enterprise environment.
Data Mesh to combine unrelated databases
By integrating your APIs with the DreamFactory API Management platform, you can quickly and easily create a REST API for your relational database. And by using the DreamFactory platform, you can take advantage of API security including user management, role-service access control, and event scripting.
Without changing your schema or writing any code, you can create virtual foreign key associations between tables in the same database or between databases that are completely different. With a single API call, you can create, read, edit, or delete objects and linked objects.
However, in certain cases, you might need to create schema-less links between different classes of objects or even different databases. Foreign key constraints can be a real pain in these scenarios because they require you to modify the database schema — something that can take a lot of time and effort.
Turn SOAP into REST
Any WSDL is quickly transformed into a live, fully documented REST API using DreamFactory. DreamFactory turns the JSON request to SOAP automatically, contacts the legacy SOAP service, and then changes the SOAP response to JSON for the client application. For testing, DreamFactory also generates Live API Docs from the WSDL.
The DreamFactory WSDL importer supports all major versions of SOAP (including 1.2) and also allows you to import multiple WSDL files at once in a single call. The DreamFactory automatic code generation makes it easy to interact with your existing SOAP services through REST without writing a lot of code or changing your database.
Server-side scripting
When you publish an API, you probably don’t want client applications to have full access to your backend data source. In addition, you may want to shape the data that is returned to the client application.
To meet any business need, you can add custom business logic to your APIs. Custom logic can be used to evaluate input parameters, alter answers to meet client requirements, and even access other APIs, supporting four scripting engines (NodeJS, PHP, Python, and V8JS).
Your logic is evaluated in real-time as each API call is processed. This makes it possible for you to add functionality that was not originally intended for the API. The same API can behave differently depending on the input provided by a client application.
Rock-solid security
API security is one of the most time-consuming and expensive aspects of API development and management. DreamFactory provides a secure single access point to your backend data sources and removes the need to write server-side code or maintain separate authentication and authorization servers.
You get all the important features you need out-of-the-box to secure both internal and external APIs. With DreamFactory, it’s easy to create roles, set record-level permissions, assign SSO authentication for multiple users, generate JSON Web Tokens (JWT), integrate with LDAP or Active Directory, or use other authentication services like Google and Facebook login.
With built-in support for the OAuth authorization framework, DreamFactory makes it easy for your users to authorize third-party applications to access their data without ever giving up their passwords. Developers can also leverage our REST API from within frontend frameworks like AngularJS and ReactJS via client-side SDKs.
DreamFactory’s role-based access control system provides flexible security settings for each service you create. Your developers can easily configure permission at the application level using an intuitive user interface.
Federated access and data governance
DreamFactory is a privacy-by-design product that incorporates governance measures to make your data compliant with GDPR and HIPAA requirements. Keep your legal, audit, security, and compliance departments pleased while also providing expedited development to your engineering team.
GDPR and HIPAA are examples of regulatory frameworks for data protection. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an EU regulation governing the protection of personal data of individuals within the European Union. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a U.S. law that protects the privacy of health data in the U.S.
DreamFactory has been designed to extend its API management features to help make applications compliant with both GDPR and HIPAA requirements by helping you:
- Protect data security and mitigate identity threats
- Proactively protect privacy
- Manage risk and ensure regulatory compliance
Organizations worldwide should pay attention to this regulation because it has implications well beyond Europe. The GDPR establishes a framework for consent, retention, rights, security, breach notification, transparency, accountability, and international transfers of personal data.
Live API docs
For each linked data source, DreamFactory generates interactive API documentation automatically. Swagger, the most prominent open-source project for API documentation, is used by DreamFactory. Before developing an application, you can use live documentation to experiment with different options and examine the request and answer.
With just a few clicks, you can create a fully-functional REST API that provides mobile and web applications with access to key services such as SQL databases, user authentication, file storage systems, NoSQL databases, push notifications, email sending, and external web services. You can also integrate data from other sources into your application with these APIs — whether it’s internal or external data.
Admin console
DreamFactory is an open-source REST API management platform. It allows front-end developers to create custom APIs on the back end, connect them to any SQL database, and then call them from their apps. The DreamFactory admin console provides the tools for the back-end developer to define the API endpoints and responses in a graphical user interface.
The admin console allows you to manage the whole DreamFactory Platform from a single location, including your REST API catalog, applications, scripts, security settings, users, roles, and more. In case you need to automate repetitive operations, all of the administrative features are also available via a REST API.
Run anywhere
As mentioned earlier DreamFactory is a free and open-source project for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. DreamFactory is a scalable, stateless, and portable programming language. It can run on private, public, or hybrid infrastructure, and your apps can be easily moved between servers. DreamFactory can be installed using Docker, Kubernetes, Bitnami, or directly from the GitHub repository.
DreamFactory is a full-featured scripting environment for developing web applications. It has an intuitive user interface that allows you to create applications with just a few clicks of a button. You can create and edit scripts in the DreamFactory IDE (or any other text editor) without having to use a command line. Your scripts will automatically be compiled into binary code that is optimized for performance.
DreamFactory supports multiple programming languages including PHP, JavaScript.
Application deployment
DreamFactory makes switching between development, testing, and production environments a breeze. You can save a package file in JSON format that contains all metadata settings for a given application. For easy deployment, DreamFactory allows you to push package files between instances via the REST API or the Admin Console.
The Package Manager lets you save a package file in JSON format that contains all metadata settings for a given application. For easy deployment, DreamFactory allows you to push package files between instances via the REST API or the Admin Console
You can also view and delete existing packages using the Admin Console.
API limits
API throttling, or rate restricting, is the process of monitoring and managing the rate of requests generated by a particular user or application. Managing the rate of incoming requests to your API prevents overloading your applications and protects them from attacks.
DreamFactory makes it simple to manage API limitations throughout your entire organization from a single location. At the instance, role, user, and endpoint levels, you can set API rate limits. API limitations are applied to each DreamFactory instance, and API requests are automatically throttled at runtime.
API restrictions safeguard your organization from dangerous assaults and help you manage costs at the critical API layer.
Logging and reporting
A primary benefit of DreamFactory is its ability to easily track API usage. This provides an opportunity to find optimizations that reduce cost, improve performance and enhance security.
For logging and reporting on API activity, DreamFactory includes the popular ELK stack (Elastic, Logstash, and Kibana). Kibana’s pre-configured dashboards split by instance, application, role, user, API endpoint, and more give configurable reporting on all API requests.
Log data can be filtered through custom queries for detailed analysis of important metrics. You can see who’s using which services how often or find out what the most popular endpoints are for your application.
API publishing
DreamFactory makes it simple to share your APIs with others. You can expose as many APIs and API keys as you need, and each API endpoint can have customizable role-based access control. Internal stakeholders, business partners, developers, end-users, and anybody else who wants secure access to your API will find it simple to utilize DreamFactory.
With DreamFactory’s API Keys feature, you can share your API with any number of users, each with their access credentials. Create an API Key for each person or group of people who will be accessing your APIs. Then simply provide them with the key and all the necessary documentation on how to use the API, which they will find easy to understand since all of our APIs are RESTful and shaped like JSON objects.
Each key has several configuration options that you can use to manage access control in a granular manner. For example, we recommend creating a separate key per service (e.g., database service) and then using the “service” field to restrict that key to only allow access to one service type. In this way, you can create keys for different services that are more targeted in scope for specific developers or use cases.
Key Benefits of Using DreamFactory REST API Management Platform
Conclusion
The DreamFactory REST API Management platform is a fantastic tool for developers since it provides a centralized mechanism to track the performance of their APIs and make quick changes. You may securely install this program to the cloud and be assured that your business data is safe.
I am a passionate, adventurous, and insatiate learner who loves to write about the latest technology trends. My experience working in an MNC has motivated me to understand that there are certain niche requirements for writing strategically about brands’ messages towards people’s interests which I’ve mastered over time through trial and error of many projects under various clients across diverse industries. It is my honest effort to put my experiences and knowledge of industry towards readers.
