Choosing the right client

Axual offers multiple methods to get data in and out of the platform. Which method you choose depends on a number of factors. The overview below should help you make the right choice and get you started.

Integrating an existing (legacy) system to the platform

EXAMPLE: you want to make messages originating from a JMS queue available as messages on a the platform, so you can make those messages available in real-time.

Connector Applications are your friend. Connector applications contain logic (and drivers) to connect to known systems, like JMS queues, and know how to read or write data originating from those systems to the platform.

Perform the following steps to see if you can proceed with a Connector Application:

  1. Check if there is a supported connector available for your use case, see Supported Connectors. Is the connector listed? Proceed with step 2.

  2. Log in to Self-Service and proceed with Creating a Connector Application. Is the connector listed in the dropdown? Continue creating the connector application using the documentation.

If the connector you want to use is not listed in the list of Supported Connectors or visible in Self Service when Creating a Connector Application, please Contact Support

Enriching an existing or building a new application to produce data to a stream

EXAMPLE: you are enriching an existing API, e.g. an Incident Reporting API, and you want to produce an incident-event for every API call made. Here you want to extend the functionality of an existing application, introducing produce functionality.

It seems that you will need an Application to get the job done. The application is created using Self-Service and is used to authorize requests to any stream it produces to and you need to create or extend an existing application to produce the data.

  1. Proceed to Creating Applications for an example in the Getting Started section or Self Service reference documentation

  2. Create and deploy your producer app by looking at the producer examples for Java, .NET or Python or use a REST client (see below)

Enriching an existing or building a new application to consume data from an existing stream

EXAMPLE: you are leveraging the events that are being produced to an existing stream. E.g., following the example above, you would be building a consumer application that subscribes to the incident-events stream.

You need an Application to get the job done. The application is created using Self-Service and is used to authorize requests to any stream it consumes from and you need to create or extend an existing application to consume the data.

  1. Check if the data you need is available on an existing stream. To see which streams are available on the platform, log in to Self-Service and click the "Streams" icon in the menu on the left. The following overview will be shown:

    Streams

  2. Create a consumer application. Proceed to Creating Applications for an example in the Getting Started section or Self Service reference documentation

  3. Create and deploy your consumer app by looking at the consumer examples for Java, .NET or Python or use a REST client (see below)

Using a REST endpoint to produce/consume data to/from an stream

EXAMPLE: you are working with an existing system of which the possibilities to use a client library are limited or nonexistent. However, the system does support building and calling HTTP endpoints.

Once again you need an Application to get the job done, and it is created using Self-Service. And you need to define HTTP calls in the system that needs to produce or consume the data.

  1. Create an application. Proceed to Creating Applications for an example in the Getting Started section or » Self Service reference documentation

  2. Define REST calls in the system you want to produce/consume to/from. Check the examples for producer and consumer here.

the performance of REST proxy is limited in comparison to language specific clients (Java, .NET or Python). If you can use such a client, this is always preferred.
REST Proxy resources are shared by all applications. Maximum parallel throughput for REST proxy is 30 produce requests per second and 14 consume requests per second with a request size of 1 KB