Message passing vs RESTful APIs: a modern approach to integration

RESTful APIs are widely used to integrate services and while they can work well in some scenarios they come with considerable drawbacks:

• the need to use polling or webhooks leads to performance bottlenecks
• the need to provide API KEYs leads to widespread security vulnerabilities
• a lack of standardization leads to high integration and maintenance costs

Identity-based message-passing systems provide a more standard means of identifying and authorizing parties and standardizing communication.

The Bottlenecks of RESTful APIs

RESTful APIs require a request-response model where the client must poll the server regularly for updates. This creates several inefficiencies:

• Polling: Clients have to constantly check for new updates, even when no new data is available. This leads to unnecessary network traffic and load on servers.
• Webhooks and Complexity: Webhooks provide a way for servers to push updates, but they introduce additional infrastructure and security challenges, making the system more complex.
• Latency: Polling introduces delays between when data changes and when the client receives it, leading to outdated information and slower response times.

Message Passing – The Solution Proven by RabbitMQ, Kafka, and SQS

Message-passing systems solve these issues by providing asynchronous communication. In a message-passing system, the producer sends a message to a broker (or directly to the consumer), and the consumer processes it at their own pace. Key benefits include:

• Asynchronous Communication: Messages are processed independently, eliminating the need for constant polling.
• Decoupled Services: The producer and consumer are loosely coupled, allowing them to operate independently without waiting for responses.
• Scalability: Message-passing systems handle high-throughput environments and scale easily by distributing messages across multiple consumers.
• Fault Tolerance: Messages can be stored in the queue and processed when the service is ready, ensuring no data is lost during downtime.

Why Organizations Prefer Messaging Systems for Microservices

Organizations that have adopted microservices rely on message-passing systems for communication between services. This is because message-passing allows microservices to remain independent and scalable, avoiding the bottlenecks of synchronous REST APIs.

In a message-passing system, microservices can communicate asynchronously, meaning they do not need to wait for responses before continuing their work. This enhances system resilience and ensures that no single service can block the operation of others, making the overall architecture more scalable and fault-tolerant.

Moreover, each microservice does not need to rely on a central service to communicate with another microservice, avoiding the hub-and-spoke model. In a traditional RESTful setup, a central service might act as a coordinator for communication, creating a bottleneck and potential point of failure. Message-passing enables direct communication between services, resulting in a more distributed and robust system.

Messaging Beyond Organizational Boundaries

Layr8 takes the benefits of message passing and applies them across organizational boundaries. Using a decentralized, peer-to-peer model, Layr8 eliminates the need for centralized brokers and allows real-time, direct communication between companies.

With Layr8, each party retains control over their communication while benefiting from real-time, direct interactions with other organizations. The platform ensures that messages are passed asynchronously, meaning that each entity operates independently without waiting for a centralized broker to process and forward the communication. This enhances performance, reduces delays, and scales effortlessly as more companies join the network.

Do you want to learn more?

Discover how Layr8 brings the power of message-passing systems to cross-organization communication. Learn more about the next steps by exploring how Layr8 enables real-time, secure, and scalable communication across boundaries.