Russell Crowe as John Nash in the movie ‘A Beautiful Mind’
These days, companies are overflowing in data and tolerating ancient API-integrations. Across all industries.
Buried in that data are trends that point to customer insights, inefficiencies and synergy opportunities that could provide a competitive edge to a company. Or, just help a company catch back up to its competitive peers.
But how to best harness this data? Not everyone is like the genius John Nash in the movie ‘A Beautiful Mind’ that can look at raw data and see the hidden, correlated magic. After all, John Nash was an 8 sigma event.
The DreamFactory platform supports thousands of data sources, but did you know the platform’s very first offering was to integrate Salesforce data? This is perhaps not a surprise, given the enormously important role Salesforce plays within enterprises large and small. IT teams often need to migrate Salesforce data into and out of databases such as MySQL and SQL Server, not to mention create customized Salesforce dashboards. These sorts of tasks are easy to do using DreamFactory’s native Salesforce connector.
We’ve just published a new chapter within our Getting Started with DreamFactory guide titled “Integrate Salesforce Data Using DreamFactory”. In this chapter you’ll learn how to configure the Salesforce connector, retrieve accounts, retrieve a specific account, and update an account. We’ll be dramatically expanding this chapter in the coming weeks to include additional features, but wanted to make this initial set of examples available as early as possible!
After months of work, countless user conversations, and a great team effort we’re happy to announce the release of DreamFactory 3! This is undoubtedly the most exciting release in several years, addressing a great number of customer requests and addressing numerous important enhancements.
This release is ready to be cloned via GitHub. Docker users can spin up the 3.0 release made available via our Docker repository. You can also take the new release for a test drive via our new hosted service! Head on over to https://genie.dreamfactory.com to start your free 14-day trial.
So what can you expect to find in this release? Let’s break it down!
Our team regularly holds detailed technical discussions with some of the largest companies in the world. From these many discussions it’s become quite apparent that lying somewhere beneath the fancy logo and glitzy commercials you’ll find IT departments relying on tried-and-true technologies and protocols to get the job done.
One particularly prominent workhorse is SFTP. The Secure File Transfer Protocol is a secure version of FTP, and it transfers data over SSH. Because developers often desire to build features capable of securely transferring files to some server, DreamFactory offers an SFTP connector capable of generating a full-featured REST API for transferring and retrieving files and directories.
DreamFactory Okta In our previous blog we dove into OpenID Connect, now let’s take a look at Okta. DreamFactory’s Okta integration works flawlessly, providing rock solid security and easy identity management. Many developers wish to integrate Okta into their application authentication infrastructure, and DreamFactory offers a straightforward solution for doing so. It is time to simplify the way your users connect to apps.
As of version 2.8 DreamFactory has supported Okta allowing you to use Okta based authentication in conjunction with your APIs. With DreamFactory’s easy to understand web-based administration console, you can easily configure your application work-flow in a snap. DreamFactory and Okta simplify the way your users to connect so your team can spend more time on developing the things that matter.
It’s time to leave the days of pain and suffering of integrating complicated authorization in the past for the future of development with DreamFactory. If you would like to learn more about how easy it is and see it in action, check out our guide chapter dedicated to all things authorization. What are you waiting for? Spin up for a free trial today!
DreamFactory OpenID One of DreamFactory’s most popular features is the wide-ranging authentication support. DreamFactory supports authorization methods to meet everyone’s needs from the single developer start-up to the thousand employee enterprise company. DreamFactory has connectors for Active Directory, LDAP, OAuth through well-known identity providers such as OpenID Connect, and SAML 2.0. Leveraging DreamFactory’s OpenID Connect has never been easier. OpenID affords users the convenience of using an existing account for signing into different websites. You can forget about managing 20 different passwords from now on! Since version 2.7 DreamFactory has supported OpenID allowing you to use OpenID based authentication in conjunction with your APIs. With the easy to use interface of DreamFactory, you can have your authorization flow done in no time. DreamFactory and OpenID does the heavy lifting giving you a session token at which point your application can persist it and include it with subsequent requests. It’s time to leave the days of pain and suffering of integrating complicated authorization in the past for the future of development with DreamFactory. If you would like to learn more about how easy it is and see it in action, check out our guide chapter dedicated to all things authorization. What are you waiting for? Spin up for a free trial today!
The tough choice of NoSQL vs SQL. An important decision for any business that may pay the price for down the road if you don’t plan accordingly. Here, we break down the important distinctions and discuss NoSQL vs SQL for you to make an informed decision.
What is NoSQL
NoSQL or Not Only SQL is an alternative to relational databases such as MySQL, Postgres, and SQL Server. Typically NoSQL databases are popular for working with large sets of data as data is stored in the form of flat collections so reading or writing operations is much faster. There is also less management for NoSQL databases as they support automatic repair, data distribution, and simpler data models.
MongoDB, Couchbase, and Cassandra are popular NoSQL databases, but what do their queries look like? If NoSQL is all about leaving SQL behind, then what happens? These are fair questions, for example MongoDB uses its own syntax that kind of resembles JavaScript. Let’s take a look:
db.inventory.find( { status: "D" } )
In the above query the example selects from the inventory collection all documents where the status equals “D”. It is not too difficult to follow, but does feel a little foreign if you are used to SQL.
What is SQL
SQL or Structured Query Language is a language used in programming and designed for managing data held in a relational database management system. Some examples of popular SQL databases are Postgres, Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL. One of many reasons for its popularity is how portable it is. SQL can be used in the program in PCs, servers, laptops, and even some of the mobile phones. Unlike NoSQL databases, SQL databases have an established, well defined standard. The language is also very straightforward, let’s take a look at it:
SELECT * FROM inventory WHERE status = "D"
In the above query the example selects from the inventory collection all documents where the status equals “D”. Sound familiar? That is because it is doing the same thing the MongoDB query is doing.
This all depends on what your goals are. SQL databases tend to be beneficial for companies that have a clear business structure and do not plan on making many changes to their database structure. If your company has rapid growth or no clear schema definitions then a NoSQL database is the right choice for you. If you’re uncertain about which type of database is best for your business, you can schedule a consultation with one of our experts today.
What if you want to use a SQL database but not learn SQL or the opposite, use a NoSQL database without learning how to handle the data? That is where DreamFactory comes into play, interact with your data without having to learn SQL. In minutes generate an API from nearly any datasource that is fully documented and secure without code. Contact an expert today to learn how to cut development cost and time in half.
Rakuten RapidAPI and DreamFactory partner up on open API adoption
We’re excited to announce that Rakuten RapidAPI, the world’s largest API marketplace is teaming up with DreamFactory, the fastest API creation and management platform. Our goal is to help our developer users streamline API development, usage and distribution.
Rakuten RapidAPI and DreamFactory tools and services will allow developers to seamlessly create swagger format APIs, easily monetize and consume public APIs, and launch new services quickly and securely.
Now that we have explored monitoring apis with Prometheus, lets take a look at monitoring our APIs with Grafana. You may have noticed from the previous blog that Prometheus is awesome, but takes some time to fully flesh out and their dashboards aren’t the best. Good thing Grafana specializes in data visualization. We will not even have to configure all our Prometheus queries, so let’s get started.
Have you ever wanted a quick and easy way to monitor your Docker environment? Do you want to have an API monitor with minimal configuration? Well it looks like there has never been a better time to monitor your API as there is a plethora of awesome tools out there to help us such as Prometheus and Grafana.
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