Sentinet Overview
Nevatech Sentinet™ product consists of Sentinet Core Components and optional Developer Portal Components. Each component can be deployed on the same or on different physical or virtual computer systems, and the computer systems can be located in the same or on different networks.
Sentinet components marked in red color designate Sentinet Core Components. Green components designate optional Developer Portal components.
Sentinet Core Components
Sentinet Nodes (Sentinet API Gateways)
A Sentinet Node, (or an API Gateway) is a network intermediary deployed as a special Microsoft .NET web proxy application hosted in a Microsoft IIS environment, which enables non-intrusive runtime manageability of RESTful APIs and SOAP services.
One or more Sentinet Node(s) can be deployed on a single or multiple machine(s).
Repository Web Application (Sentinet Management Server)
The Repository Web Application is an HTML5/JavaScript Web Application that includes Sentinet Management APIs. This Web Application hosts the interactive Sentinet Administrative Console and is connected to an API Repository database, an on premises or cloud Microsoft SQL Server database or the native Azure SQL database in the cloud, in which Sentinet stores its configuration along with all APIs and their associated assets, artifacts and API monitoring data.
Sentinet API Repository Database
Sentinet API Repository database stores Sentinet configuration along with all registered APIs and their associated assets, artifacts and API monitoring data.
Sentinet Developer Portal Components
Developer Portal components are optional. They are required only when the owner of the Sentinet product (typically API Provider) wants to offer API consumers a specialized “Developer Portal” User Experience.
Developer Portal Web Application
The Developer Portal Web Application helps API Consumers (“developers”) to learn about provider APIs, documentation, samples and Swagger/OpenAPI/WSDL documents. The application provides developers with self-registration process to request subscriptions for APIs and API Products consumption with automatic generation of API Keys, monitoring and dashboard/analytical capabilities. The Developer Portal Web Application is a built on top of the open source Umbraco CMS (Content Management System) system, and is typically branded (white-labeled) by the API Provider (owner of the Sentinet product).
Sentinet Developer Portal CMS Database
Developer Portal visual aspects and custom content can be fully customized by leveraging Developer Portal CMS Database integrated in the product.
A Sentinet Node, a.k.a. API Gateway, is a network intermediary deployed as a special Microsoft .NET application hosted in a Microsoft IIS server environment. A Sentinet Node provides non-intrusive runtime manageability of the RESTful APIs and SOA services through services virtualization. As a network intermediary, a Sentinet Node receives messages sent by an API consumer application and routes them to the designated backend (business) API(s). Sentinet’s messages interception mechanism is the fundamental basic for non-intrusive manageability of APIs and SOA services. By leveraging capability of a full visibility and control of how messages are received and forwarded to services and APIs, Sentinet infrastructure implements comprehensive manageability of business services and APIs.
Sentinet Nodes have the capability to dynamically host virtual (façade) services. A Sentinet Virtual Service is a service that has all the attributes of a typical API or a Web Service, except that it exists only in the context of the Sentinet infrastructure and does not have any business-related implementation. Sentinet Virtual Services are designed and managed by Sentinet administrators using Sentinet Administrative Console or automated routines. A single Sentinet Virtual Service can route messages to one or more business services and can be hosted on one or more Sentinet Nodes, and with one or more endpoints.
By creating Sentinet Virtual Services, administrators effectively define how their REST APIs and SOAP services will be accessed by API consumers and how these will be controlled from all manageability aspects such as security, access control and authorization rules, services usage, performance, monitoring, auditing, SLA management, alerting, reporting, and more.
Sentinet Nodes can be deployed on multiple computers and different networks, and more than one Sentinet Node can be deployed on a single computer.
API software assets, services and APIs’ metadata, Sentinet configuration, real-time monitoring data, and all other artifacts and attributes associated with managed services and API solutions are registered in, and managed from the central, persistent and durable API/SOA catalog called Sentinet Repository; this can be a Microsoft SQL Server on-premises or Azure cloud database.
Sentinet Nodes communicate with the Sentinet Web Services Management Application via configurable, lightweight, outbound-only heartbeats (secure REST API calls or Web Service SOAP calls), thus enabling Sentinet infrastructure with the capabilities to host Sentinet Nodes within multiple on-premises and cloud networks and behind firewalls in respect to the central Sentinet Web Services Application and the Sentinet Repository.
Sentinet Administrators can remotely control and monitor all aspects of managed API and SOA solutions through the Sentinet Administrative Console, a browser-based Internet Application.
The entire Sentinet infrastructure is managed through the interoperable and extendable Sentinet Management Web Services API. Developers can leverage and extend this API to build their own management extensions and applications, either independent from, or integrated with the Sentinet Administrative Console.
Virtual Services (façade services) hosted on Sentinet Nodes decouple consumer applications from business services and APIs, allowing developers to focus on the business implementations and to delegate the complexity of security, monitoring and other API Management aspects to the Sentinet infrastructure. Sentinet Virtual Services are dynamic services—they are designed using a graphical user interface in the Sentinet Administrative console. Sentinet Nodes dynamically open and close virtual service endpoints, enforce designated security, authentication and authorization requirements, manage security identities and provide powerful and flexible monitoring and reporting for the services’ and APIs’ messages exchanges.
A Sentinet Virtual Service can be designed and constructed
as a composite service that aggregates more than one non-virtual service (a virtual service can also virtualize and aggregate other virtual services).
to implement all or selected operations of the service(s) it virtualizes,
to routes messages to selected endpoints of the virtualized service(s).
The virtual services’ inbound endpoints, security and reliability policies, supported transports, message encodings and message formats can be very different from the backend business services it virtualizes. Through this powerful Sentinet virtualization mechanism, developers can standardize and simplify their services and APIs communications and security implementations. API consumers get access to virtual services that expose dynamic endpoints with flexible and managed communications and security configurations.