API Performance and Why You Should Care about It?

However, you must ensure that your APIs perform correctly with a reliable and consistent testing process. It is where the API performance test comes in handy because it prevents the end-users or customers from getting frustrated because of a lagging system.

What is API Performance and Why do We Need it ?

API performance verifies the business logic of an application that connects user-interface layers and data layers. API performance tests can request single or multiple API endpoints to determine whether an interface meets the performance, reliability, functionality, and security requirements. Software teams implement continuous API testing processes so that the software development process moves forward and developers know if their applications have delivered the user requirements correctly.

API performance metrics get measured in a hierarchical structure in sync with operational API metrics. We will discuss the top metrics to improve API performance below.

Request Per Minute

Request Per Minute or RPM measures applications handled by application managers. The performance metric serves as an upper bound and gets engineered to reduce the number of API calls.

Average And Maximum Latency

API latency is an elapsed time tracking done in api manager that helps analyze customer experiences. The latency also correlates to a drop in user responsiveness.

Errors Per Minute

Errors Per Minute or EPM refers to the number of API calls with non-status codes per minute. It stops processing additional calls after reaching the limit and measuring critical or error-prone API calls.

API Usage Growth

An API usage helps measure the API adoption of your application interface. It allows engineers or managers to ensure a capable and error-free API.

CPU Usage

CPU usage is a significant component for measuring API responsiveness and performance. Engineers or managers use CPU usage to assess API health and resource planning.

Ways To Monitor API Performance

You can track the metrics that describe significant aspects of an application’s performance during the monitoring sessions. The number of API calls, the time required to reply to the calls, and the amount of data provided are significant metrics to consider for monitoring API performance.

We will discuss the ways to monitor API performance below.

Synthetic Monitoring

Synthetic monitoring is an application performance monitoring that imitates the user paths when interacting with applications through api gateway. The synthetic monitoring system generates user activity for different scenarios, geographical locations, device types, variables, etc., by employing scripts. It keeps track of application uptime and informs how an application responds to user behavior.

The synthetic monitoring system gives crucial information about the application functionalities after the data gets collected and analyzed.

API Analytics

API analytics help analyze product and customer metrics like retention, engagement, developer conversions, etc. Engineering, sales, marketing teams, and product owners benefit from API analytics because it helps sort, filter, and aggregate API data and gets presented as correlated data. Web API performance analytics provide details on rest api management setting quotas, implementing advanced security policies, managing service levels, building business controls, evaluating trends, and managing communities.

5 Ways to Enhance API Performance

API performance can get affected by issues like network latency or outages, spikes in server load, lack of compression, or configure caching. Organizations can adapt the following ways to enhance API performance.

Cache Requests

Caching is a significant way of improving API performance. A cached version of the response for frequently sent requests avoids excessive database queries. You can cache responses and periodically force them to expire during a data update session.

Prevent Abuse

Accidental abuses like distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks must get prevented at an earlier stage to avoid distracting API performance monitoring and testing. You can implement a rate-limiting strategy to avoid such troublesome API attacks.

Use PATCH

PATCH helps update resources and partially updates them to improve API performances. So, you must urge your developers to use the PATCH method to enable smaller payloads and resource updates with improved performance sessions. PATCH also helps reduce the request sizes and yields different results for multiple requests.

Limit Payloads

You must reduce the payload sizes of your APIs to enable them to perform efficiently. You may spend more time on CPU usage to decompress the file, but it helps reduce the download size and is worth the trade-off with your clients.

Fast Network

Slow networks can impact API performances and cause outright downtime that may violate the terms of services for API clients. So, you must invest in good infrastructure to maintain the right level of API performance. You can also resolve network-related performance issues in end-to-end api management by purchasing reliable cloud infrastructure and using reputable hosts. You can run the background tasks in separate threads to avoid blocking requests.

Summing It Up

APIs allow two applications to communicate data using web addresses called API endpoints that serve as communication channels. You must monitor API performance by gathering and evaluating relevant data to ensure zero system lagging and network-related errors. API performance monitoring and measurement hold significance for organizations in current multi-cloud environments. Are you looking for a reliable API platform for application integration and communication? Look no more as Unified.cc helps you connect multiple APIs with a single API. The platform also helps speed up developmental processes and ensures regulatory compliance of every system.