Technologists are good at technology, but they aren't always aware of the impacts it has on business in real-time. When it comes to delivering APIs and event-driven architecture, many developers focus on the technical details, as they should, but often times at the cost of what actually matters to the business being served by the APIs and event-driven approaches. This reality often results in a misalignment between IT and business groups, something that has been playing out for decades and results in the legacy technical debt that almost every company of a certain size suffers from.

After spending time assessing the companies that are making the biggest impact with APIs and streaming technology, you begin to see that event-driven APIs aren't just about being able to technically deliver in real-time, it is about being able to do business in real-time and responding to what matters as it occurs. Something that isn't always evident to the technologists delivering the underlying technology, and dialing in the details of event-driven approaches to doing APIs. All of this isn't just about responding to inserts, updates, and deletes in a system, it is about identifying the most significant and meaningful changes in the underlying systems that a business depends on to get things done each day.

Using Streamdata.io, it is easy to take any API and deliver it as a real-time stream of data. It takes a little more planning to proxy a well-designed API, which allows for proper filtering of data before you turn it into a real-time stream using Streamdata.io. Creating more meaningful, topical streams that end-users can tune into, allowing them to filter out the information they aren't interested in and receive incremental updates regarding the data that will make an impact on their day and help them better achieve their goals. Making real-time streams of data something that users can configure, dial-in, and tailored for what they are looking for, not just delivering streams of data because it is technologically interesting or the latest in cool tech tools. Making event-driven APIs more about business objectives than they are about technological implementations to satisfy what IT teams, developers, and technologists are interested in.

We often come across websockets that are used as a general streaming technological tool. Where technologists deliver real-time implementations without any fine-tuning or concern for business objects — just make if fast. This is one reason why Streamdata.io has focused on augmenting existing web APIs, hopefully augmenting what is already there, exposed in the design of the API with a more event-driven layer. However, there are limitations to this approach. Without a well-designed API, with the proper path and parameter controls to filter and refine the results delivered via an API, our streams can quickly become real-time streams of noise. We prefer proxying existing web APIs that have been sensibly designed to match the business objectives of a company with controls that are designed to serve the needs of business users. This way, we can take things to the next level with real-time streams of data, allowing users to do business in real-time, responding to what matters most as it occurs.