Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers SE Radio 663: Tyler Flint on Managing External APIs
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Apr 8, 2025 Tyler Flint, CEO of qpoint.io and an expert in managing vendor dependencies, shares valuable insights on handling external APIs. He discusses the differences between internal and external services, the challenges of tracking usage, and security concerns like authentication. Metrics for monitoring, acceptable error rates, and tips for managing outages are covered, along with the transition of qPoint from a proxy-based solution to eBPF. Tyler emphasizes the importance of understanding hidden dependencies and maintaining robust API relationships for operational resilience.
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Service Adoption Processes
- Organizational processes for adopting new services vary significantly, from strict security-first approaches to more open piloting.
- Some companies require extensive security audits before onboarding new vendors, while others have less formal processes.
Unexpected Feature Flag Dependency
- A company discovered a critical dependency on a feature flagging application after installing QPoint's agent.
- The application was calling the API on every request without caching, leading to high traffic and potential performance issues.
Risks of External Services
- External services introduce risks related to cost, compliance, and reputation.
- Cost risks include unexpected usage, rate limiting, and difficulty attributing costs to specific customers or services.