Separating Data APIs and Business Logic with an API Gateway

Today, I conversed with a friend about separating data APIs from business logic. Coincidentally, my friend is a wine enthusiast. This inspired me to use wine as a metaphor—specifically, the distinction between raw wine ("original wine") and the wine we enjoy in stores.

Raw Wine as Data APIs

In the wine world, "original wine" is a high-quality, unrefined product directly from fermentation and distillation, often with an alcohol content of 65% to 68%. It’s stored and sometimes graded but rarely sold directly. Instead, it forms the foundation for finished wines crafted through blending, dilution, and fine-tuning.

Similarly, data APIs are like raw wine—high-quality and carefully prepared to meet exacting standards. They provide essential, reliable data that serves as the backbone for applications. While not tailored for specific business needs, this data remains a solid foundation for further refinement.

API Gateway as the Winemaker

The API Gateway plays the role of the winemaker, transforming high-quality raw wine into finished products. By combining and processing data from APIs, the Gateway creates tailored outputs to meet various market demands. For example:

• Blending different wines mirrors combining data from multiple sources to create unique services.
• Diluting wine to achieve desired alcohol levels parallels filtering or aggregating data for specific requirements.
• Fine-tuning flavours resembles applying business rules to craft customised outputs.

Why This Separation Matters

Separating data APIs from business logic, much like separating raw wine from the finishing process, brings several benefits:

• Flexibility: High-quality raw wine can be crafted into many styles; well-designed APIs support diverse use cases without modification.
• Scalability: New business demands require updates to the Gateway, not the underlying data APIs.
• Consistency: Maintaining the purity of raw wine or data ensures a reliable foundation for future products.

Conclusion

As wineries transform high-quality raw wine into market-ready products, separating data APIs from business logic allows organisations to create flexible and scalable solutions. The raw data remains versatile and dependable, while the Gateway ensures it’s tailored to meet customer needs. Does this sound familiar? It feels remarkably similar to microservices architecture, doesn’t it?

Next time you sip a glass of wine, consider the journey from high-quality raw wine to finished product—and how your data systems might benefit from a similar approach.