In an more and more interconnected enterprise world, having the ability to join enterprise intelligence (BI) instruments to inner purposes or information sources is a should. Thankfully, a lot of the business has standardized round REST APIs, which supplies a place to begin for making these connections, but it surely’s not an ideal system because it stands in the present day.
Progress Principal Gross sales Engineer, Dennis Bennett mentioned “Just about each SaaS software will expose a REST API to present you entry to it. Since [these applications are] hosted within the cloud, they’re by no means going to present you entry to the database that holds your information as a result of that’s simply approach too insecure, however they may give you entry by means of an API with the intention to make a request to get your information and it’ll undergo some logic to make sure what you’re asking for is one thing you’re entitled to.”
Dennis Bennett, Principal Gross sales Engineer at Progress.
He defined that the draw back to REST APIs is that they don’t lock you down into any particular approach of accessing that information. Because of this each supply handles it in a barely totally different approach. They may have totally different authentication strategies or alternative ways of returning information, like JSON or XML or CSV, for instance. The problem then turns into creating customized integrations that account for every of those variations.
That is straightforward work for builders, who Bennett mentioned might “do it of their sleep,” however for enterprise customers with out that experience, they should put in an IT request to get entry.
That is the place the Progress Autonomous REST Connector is available in, offering a simple approach for non-technical customers to construct and deploy information connectors to REST API sources without having to attend for somebody in IT to set it up.
To have the ability to create these connections to numerous REST sources, the Autonomous REST Connector Composer transforms information right into a format that’s simpler to work with, equivalent to remodeling embedded arrays into standardized tables. “The ability customers are used to utilizing BI instruments, in order that they’re actually simply utilizing the Composer to create the mannequin after which from there, they will use it like another information supply,” he mentioned.
For instance, an organization that makes use of Tableau Energy BI can run their inner information sources by means of Composer to get that information right into a tabular construction that may then be accessed utilizing SQL queries.
Whereas Bennett touted how straightforward it’s to make use of the Autonomous REST Connector, Progress additionally provides quite a few pre-built templates to make the method even simpler. He mentioned that these will get clients eighty % of the best way there and assist velocity up the mixing course of.
In keeping with Bennett, the Connector is especially helpful for inner tasks as a result of inner information is commonly business-critical and must be accessible to do analytics and reporting. Moreover, inner purposes are sometimes even much less standardized than business purposes, as a result of they may have added their very own proprietary extensions or customized authentication strategies.
“Usually folks will do issues like extract and cargo a relational database to do reporting on it, however that’s not ultimate as a result of it provides extra transferring components and the info goes stale shortly. The Progress Autonomous REST Connector provides you entry to those proprietary assets the place you’re not going to get a business driver [to help],” he mentioned.
When it comes to authentication, the Connector helps the usual methodology of OAuth 2.0, whereas additionally supporting further types of authentication that is likely to be seen in an inner software. In contrast with business purposes, inner ones generally have further steps concerned, equivalent to doing a Light-weight Listing Entry Protocol (LDAP) lookup earlier than choosing up OAuth 2.0 credentials.
“Typically we see OAuth 2.0 plus plus, and what I imply by that’s it’s OAuth 2.0, however they’ve added additional stuff to it—whether or not it’s additional fields and a submit physique or further headers—customized authentication lets you assist not solely regular OAuth 2.0, but in addition these form of additional OAuth [protocols] that we frequently see in enterprise purposes,” he mentioned.
Lastly, one other state of affairs that’s frequent in enterprise purposes is wanting to have the ability to filter information in a particular approach that is probably not typical. For instance, as a substitute of seeing all clients, you may solely wish to see one particular buyer or all clients in a particular ZIP code.
“Sometimes, you’ll see both filters within the URL as question parameters, or perhaps you’ll see them in a submit physique. Typically we see these inner purposes that do each, and typically we see totally different syntax for organising these filters. And so, the thought is that the Connector can deal with even these non-standard issues,” Bennett mentioned.
