The API management pattern integrates applications with enterprise systems and other cloud-based services using APIs. The following are the main components of the API management pattern:
- API management portal
- API user
- Enterprise services
The consumer of each API service first sends a request to the API management portal. The API management portal interacts with the enterprise service before sending a response to the consumer. APIs use industry-standard formats for messages such as SOAP for web services and XML or JSON for representational state transfer. The API management portal acts as a simple proxy and helps to forward request and response messages to and from the backend.