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Over the last two decades, REST has become the de facto standard when it comes to designing Web APIs, as it doesn't require any special initialisation or libraries when working with APIs and offered structured access to resources. But as the need for more efficiency and flexibility for requirements arose, GraphQL started to become a favored alternative. While both offer their own advantages, which one should you be using? Two key folks from Postman answer this on our third Technology Smackdown, with OpenAPI Lead Arnaud Lauret returning to represent REST and Open Technologies Technical Lead Doc Jones for the GraphQL side.

According to Gartner, organisations will be investing in more hyperautomation initiatives in 2022 in order to increase efficiency and to deliver a better digital experiences to their customers. These initiatives will include both business process automation (BPA) and robotic process automation (RPA). In this Technology Smackdown, we were joined by Tom Taulli, author of “The Robotic Process Automation Handbook" and Nandan Mullakara, CEO of Innomatiq, to explore the differences between the two automation approaches, and how each can help drive digital transformation forward within organisation.

As systems continue to become more and more distributed, optimising and organising logs becomes much needed as well. In this episode, Oracle Cloud Developer Evangelist and author of "Logging in Action" Phil Wilkins leads us in a discussion on unifying logs and proper log management through the use of Fluentd. He also talks about the importance of making log entries easier to understand and achieving "Clear Language."

Event-driven architectures are known to improve agility and scalability in systems while offering a great advantage when used with microservices. In this episode, we take a deeper dive into event-driven microservices with Confluent Staff Technologist Adam Bellemare, who discusses the concepts, patterns and workflows behind event-driven architectures in a microservices setting.

While SOLID is the known standard when it comes to software design and architecture, it may be hard to apply for some as it limits developers to specific techniques in going about it. In this episode, Daniel Terhorst-North, originator of Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD)and Deliberate Discovery, presents his arguments on why SOLID isn't exactly the best bet when if comes to design principles, offering an alternative that can help against the misapplications of various agile practices.

Two of the most popular message brokers used today are JMS and Kafka. While both have their own pros and cons, which one should you actually use? In this episode, we have our first-ever Technology Smackdown, where we pit two technologies or architectural styles against each other for a friendly sparring match. Today, we find out how JMS and Kafka stack up against each other and how they apply to certain use-cases. Joining us are Red Hat’s Senior Principle Software Engineer Clement Escoffier for the JMS side, and Confluent’s Field CTO Kai Waehner for the Kafka side.

What exactly does GDPR mean for businesses and API developers? In this episode, we talk about the important concepts on GDPR and how APIs can help organisations with compliance. We are joined by the APIDays Conference founder and ALIAS co-founder Mehdi Medjaoui, who also discusses the API-as-a-product mindset and some of the most popular API styles today.

APIs are one of the pillars in enabling digital transformation. In this episode, we discuss the business value of APIs and API strategies and why implementing them is beneficial to an organisation and to several industries. We are joined by Oracle Hospitality Senior Director of Product Management Luis Weir, who talks about his first-hand experiences in overseeing API strategies and tackles some concepts behind Streaming APIs.

What makes OpenAPI today’s standard when it comes to designing APIs? This episode, we tackle the advantages of using the OpenAPI description format and its proper applications when designing APIs. SmartBear senior architect Joshua Ponelat and API consultant Lucas Rosenstock, co-authors of “Designing APIs with Swagger and OpenAPI,” give us a closer look at the specification and tooling that has become the standard choice today and share some tips in building well-designed APIs

In this episode, we take a look at the importance of testing and a good test strategy model when developing software and APIs. We are joined by Ministry of Testing's OpsBoss and author of Testing of Web APIs Mark Winteringham, who tells us why he advocates for API testing even before a line of code is written. He also talks about how testing helps control risk and quality during the development lifecycle, and how it can help bring IT teams and stakeholders together on the same page.

How do you drive value to your organisation's digital transformation? In this episode, we are joined by one of the co-authors of "Edge: Value Driven Digital Transformation" Linda K. Luu, who educates us on where organisations should invest in to find success with their digital initiatives. She also gives an overview of the "lean value tree" and how it can help set priorities and put value in the organisation's work.

What should companies prioritise as we continue to shift towards a more digitally transformed world Interarbor Solutions Principal Analyst and host of the BriefingsDirect podcast Dana Gardner answers this and discusses the values that should be fostered inside organisations in order to keep up with the technological change that comes with digital transformation.