API Gateway
The API Gateway is responsible for aggregating data or, in some cases, acting as a simple routing layer for appropriate services. The API gateway can be seen as a single point of failure or, as Sam Newman describes it, as a single monolithic gateway. A better approach may be to create multiple API gateways for the different platform or frontends that your application needs to support. This is also referred to as backends for frontends.
- Benefits:
Clients are isolated from the partitioning of the microservice architecture behind the gateway Clients do not have to worry about locations of specific services Reduces the number of requests/roundtrips Simplifies the clients by moving the aggregation logic into the API gateway
- Drawbacks:
Increased complexity - API gateway is one more moving part added to the list within you microservices architecture Increased response time compared to direct calls, because of the additional network hop through the API gateway Danger of implementing to much logic in the aggregation layer
