WSO2 ESB 4.0.3 is Out with REST API Support

WSO2 ESB 4.0.3 is now available for download. This contains several bug fixes over WSO2 ESB 4.0.0 and 4.0.2 releases. In addition to that this release comes with the highly anticipated REST API management support. This is a very powerful feature which I believe will be a game changer. I'm planning to do a series of blog posts and articles in the near future describing various use cases and capabilities of this brand new feature. At WSO2 we have already done some public webinars, workshops and development work for actual customers using the REST API support in the new ESB release and the feedback we have received so far has been phenomenal.

REST support is nothing new for WSO2 ESB. Even though we are primarily based on Apache Axis2, which is a SOAP engine, we have always had support for exposing RESTful interfaces and mediating RESTful invocations. However REST support in WSO2 stack was always a bit of a black sheep in the family. More often than not REST was perceived as a second class citizen in the WSO2 stack. But the new REST API support we have implemented changes all that. Now REST fans can easily define REST APIs and associated resources on the ESB and combine them with the powerful mediation features provided by the underlying messaging framework. Instead of worrying about mapping REST concepts to SOAP (which was the old way of handling REST calls with proxy services), developers can now configure REST endpoints in the ESB by directly specifying HTTP verbs, URL patterns (servlet styled), URI templates, HTTP media types and other related headers. Most REST fans will find themselves at home when working with the new API support in WSO2 ESB.

That's only a beginning. We are also looking into combining some of our best products together (including ESB of course) to come up with a comprehensive API management solution. This will be a complete platform where developers will be able to develop and expose REST APIs and users can subscribe and consume them.

As shown in the above diagram, core API management features such as API key management, user management, security and SLA monitoring are all provided by the solution itself. We are also looking at how to leverage our multi-tenant support to make this solution work seamlessly in the cloud.

If you are interested in learning more about the new REST API support in WSO2 stack and our future plans in this area, we are conducting a series of workshops on this very topic in US later this month. I'm sure you will find these sessions both interesting and eye opening. Also stay tuned for my own blog posts and articles on the subject which will give a more in-depth technical insight on the matter.