Overview

The CData API Server enables you to build REST APIs from your existing enterprise data. Through simple point-and-click configuration, you can expose your databases, file stores, and back-end APIs to web, mobile, and custom apps.

Key Features

• APIs from any database: Generate APIs for SQL, NoSQL, and other data sources – SQL Server, MySQL, DB2, Mongo, Cassandra, flat files, etc.
• Open data access: Expose entry points for popular formats like OData, REST, JSON, SOAP, CSV/TSV, etc.
• API management: Monitor the APIs, enable logging and rate limiting, etc.
• Publish to any platform: Host the API Server on intranets, internet-facing servers, or in the cloud.

Getting Started

See Getting Started for a step-by-step setup guide.

Server Configuration

The CData API Server is a lightweight Web application available in .NET and Java editions.

Hosting the Windows (.NET) Edition

The Windows edition installs a stand-alone server: see Starting the Server. Or, host the API Server in IIS: see Configuration in IIS.

Hosting the Java Edition

The Java edition is packaged as a WAR file, with a drop-in installation: see Java Edition to host the API Server on Tomcat and other popular Java servers.

Hosting Behind a Firewall

With the Windows edition’s Cloud Gateway feature, you can expose internal resources securely across the firewall via embedded SSH reverse tunneling. The Cloud Gateway enables you to build an SSH reverse tunnel to an SSH host outside the firewall. The Gateway can also manage the reverse tunnel connection, reconnecting if the connection is lost or interrupted, without any need for a third-party tool.

API Design

See API Design to start working with the standard REST APIs:

• Authenticating and controlling access: See Users to create an API user and authtoken; you can then provide the user’s authtoken in HTTP Authentication. The authtoken defines the user’s permission set, which overrides the server’s Rate Limiting defaults. See Configuring the API for the procedure to enable client access to the APIs; for example, to connect from browser-based clients you need to configure CORS.

• Discovering the APIs: Based on OpenAPI (Swagger), the APIs are fully documented and discoverable. See Discovery to provide the metadata URLs to apps, client-side libraries, etc.

• Querying the APIs: You can connect through OData, JSON, or the CData Drivers for API Server. See Querying the API for more on connecting from different standards-based tools.

  See the following sections to build HTTP requests to the OData and JSON endpoints: Resources and Actions show how to execute CRUD operations. Filtering Resources shows how to search data. Additional Formats shows how to request data from the other Web services endpoints available, such as JSONP.

  Server Responses enumerates the HTTP responses.

• Deploying APIs: See Deployment to host the API Server and the APIs you design separately on different servers.

Logging and Notifications

Logging details the logging resources available at the server and application levels.

Advanced

The resources of your APIs are defined by authoring text-based schemas, which have a simple format that makes them easy to edit. Extend the schemas, or write your own, to control the RESTful view of your data. See Typical Customizations to make modifications like changing column data types.

Advanced also provides a reference to extending schemas to accomplish more advanced integrations, such as using stored procedures to update a database view. Schema Customization introduces you to the parts of a schema.