WSO2 Basic Overview

WSO2 Introduction:

WSO2 is an open-source technology provider which offers an enterprise platform for integrating application programming interfaces (APIs), applications, and web services locally and across the Internet.

WSO2 solutions give enterprises the flexibility to deploy applications and services on-premises, on private or public clouds, or in hybrid environments and easily migrate between them as needed.

WSO2 Platform:

WSO2 platform provides 3 main products to design and maintain application.

API Manger, Enterprise Integrator and Identity Server

WSO2-products

API MANAGER

Api Manager helps to design and consume APIs. API Gateway helps to manage API requests and apply policies to them. API rate limiting feature helps to regulate traffic and secure against security attacks. API security provide Authentication and authorize features to API requests. 

API Manager provides Analytics feature to monitor application behavior and 

API management platform is available for on-premises, cloud, and hybrid architectures.

ENTERPRISE INTEGRATOR

Enterprise integrator provides hybrid integration platform. It enables API-centric integration using integration architecture styles such as microservices or centralized ESB.

 

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator is having 2 different architectural styles:

• Micro Integrator: It is event-driven standard message based engine. It supports message routing, transformation and other type messaging use-cases. Micro integrator is used when you need centralized, API-driven integration architecture. Micro integrator can also be used where you need a decentralized cloud-native integration like Microservices and where you need low-code integration and application monitoring.
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Streaming Integrator: It is very useful for performing ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) and where streaming operations required. It provides real time analysis of streamed data with the help of SQL-like query languages. Streaming integrator is fully compatible with systems like Kafka and NATS to full utilize of stream data. It has native support to work with WSO2 Micro integrator to trigger complex integration flows.

Benefits of WSO2 ESB

• Ensures loosely coupled solution with easy to manage plug-ins.
• Suited for Scalable design.
• It provides agile incremental solutions for development, early/often deployment, and seamless change management.
• Configuration driven design, as opposed to code driven design.

IDENTITY SERVER

WSO2 Identity server is an open source API-driven tool which provides CIAM(Customer identity and access management) solutions effectively.

It is extensible, highly scalable platform which helps to manage identities at both cloud and enterprise environments. With CIAM solutions, it gives enhanced, seamless, and secure digital experiences.

Happy Learning :)

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.NET key concepts and introduction of .NET Core

What is .NET Core? Is this the future of .NET? Is this will obsolete the existing platform? Is this backward compatible? If all this are buzzing in your mind, please take a cup of coffee and go through the below topic, I promise you when you have your last sip of coffee you will have brief idea about this booming topic.

Basic of .NET

.NET is a free, open-source development platform for building many kinds of apps. .NET is open source, using MIT and Apache 2 licenses. A .NET app is developed for and runs in one or more implementations of .NET. .NET Framework, .NET 5 (and .NET Core), and Mono are the three most important implementations of .NET. Below are the key concepts of .NET.

 

What is .NET Standard?

There are various implementations of .NET. Each implementation allows .NET code to execute in different places—Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, and many more. .NET Standard is a formal specification of the APIs that are common across all these .NET implementations.

The relationship between .NET Standard and a .NET implementation is the same as between the HTML specification and a browser. The second is an implementation of the first.

Each .NET version has an associated version of the .NET Standard. .NET Standard is defined as a single NuGet package because all .NET implementations are required to support it. Tooling becomes easier because the tools have a consistent set of APIs to use for a given version. You can also build a single library project for multiple .NET implementations.

.NET Ecosystem

.NET includes the below components for each implementations:

.NET Implementations

There are four .NET implementations that Microsoft supports:

 Glimpse of .NET Implementations

What to choose when? (.NET Framework and .NET 5(including .NET Core))

Microsoft maintains both runtimes for building applications with .NET, and they share many of the same APIs. This shared API is what is called the .NET Standard.

Pick .NET 5

ü  If there is a new application to build, and have a choice between .NET Core and .NET Framework, .NET Core is the way to go.

ü  If the application need cross platform implementation(Windows, Linux, and macOS)

ü  Microservice architecture supported, so it allows the cross platform service developed under .NET framework, Ruby, Java etc communicate within another

ü  Containers are the VMs of today. .NET Framework can be used on Windows containers but .NET core is more modular, flexible and lightweight and after containerize because of it’s cross platform nature it can deploy in various Docker(ex:- Linux Docker containers)

ü  .NET CORE is one of the best performing one among web based frameworks in terms of performance and scalability 

Pick .NET Framework

ü  If existing application is .NET framework and there is no mind to change it

ü  The old technologies are using in the project which are not yet incorporated in .NET CORE(ASP.NET webforms , Visual Basic and F#)

ü  In cases where the libraries or NuGet packages use technologies that aren't available in .NET Standard or .NET 5 then it is required the .NET framework.

Happy Learning :)

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Pattern Matching in Dataweave Using Match Case

 Bonjour!

Just like any other programming language, In Mule4, dataweave provides match function to achieve the functionality of if-else statements. 

A match expression contains a list of case statements that can optionally have an else statement. Each case statement consists of a conditional selector expression that must evaluate to either true or false.

Let's consider a scenario where you need to update certain fields of incoming payload keeping the rest of the fields as it is, you can use a match and case. 

for example, the following is the input JSON object:

Input:

{

    "address": {

     "houseNumber" : null,

"street" : "IOC Road",

"pincode" : "111222",

"landmark" : "Statue of unity",

"city" : "Ahmedabad",

"state" : "Gujarat",

"country" : "India"

    }

}

Dataweave Transformation:

%dw 2.0

output application/json

var flag = if (payload.address.houseNumber == null) false else true

---

{

"updateAddressRequest":

payload.address mapObject (value,key,index) ->(

key as String match {

case "pincode" -> {(key): "000000"}

case "houseNumber" -> {(key): if(flag == false) "00" else ""}

else -> {(key):(value)}

}

)

}

Output:

{

"updateAddressRequest": {

"houseNumber": "00",

"street": "IOC Road",

"pincode": "000000",

"landmark": "Statue of unity",

"city": "Ahmedabad",

"state": "Gujarat",

"country": "India"

}

}

What we did here with the input JSON object is that we matched the keys using keyword match and then based on a condition updated the value of the key. We then used the else keyword in order to keep the rest of the fields the same as the input. 

In above example we are updating houseNumer and pincode field with case and other fields are remains same with else block.

This is also an example of how we can use the match case with mapObject. 

Pattern matching using Match Case can be done on Literal values, on expressions, on Data Types, and on Regular Expressions. 

Adios amigos!

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How to pass payload using Get method-Mule4

Hello Friends, 

I recently worked for one of API implementation where I needed to encrypt and send/receive one or more field in queryParms/headers while calling Get operation to external system.

As per API standard Get method should not pass payload as body while calling any Apis or 3rd party systems. Get method supports Uri Params, Query Params or Header Attributes.

In this article, I will show you the technique how you can pass encrypted payload using Http Get method. This is one of tricky interview question which normally asked in Mulesoft or Api Design related interviews.

As we know the when we encrypt any value it will not be a single string. Encrypted value may be of be multiple line as given below for PGP encryption for value 123456

-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----

Version: BCPG v1.58

hIwDmCS94uDDx9kBA/9NIO0Kq9+yhXBLQveoykVjbECqXnGM8DargSsBxE2xBLQP

000W7mre5YpeSRJi4dvjVkAKPaxIFJhHlUNv38i5DkGD/z53SKtbKfYdfT+3oHT4

SVnIkcqWM+i+xawrKSk8Lz+j5GaJZ+wQrrxi8TP9RVW+wZlcbBNfxZVShDYp8dJX

AX9/x+1dFyO0EtHBipB0MLOqrb+sua028HGcg7E/sptn89JAgUcNEXOurVSfN6Ws

P/KxUMQY9+KKQQKavJ6LC92a6GJhVk4S+cnY1sxDLGtqKcGd+qCd

\u003dwGi2

-----END PGP MESSAGE-----

For both scenario(send/receive) we will be using (dw::core::Binaries) module from dataweave

toBase64(Binary): String

It takes Binary as input and returns result as base64 encoded String.

base64 Encoding

fromBase64(String): Binary

It takes base64 encoded String and returns original Binary data as a result.

base64 decoding

In this article we have seen how to convert encrypted payload to base64 encoded string and vice-versa. We can do the same conversion and pass with other payload type like JSON/XML etc..
These two dataweave functions are quite useful while dealing with payload with GET method.

Happy Learning :)

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Mulesoft Interview Questions With Answers - Part 2

Bonjour!

Let's take a look at some more Mulesoft basic interview-related questions!

Which component is used for schema validation and routing incoming Mule messages against RAML?

APIkit Router. 

Mule provides APIkit Router for Schema validation and routing the incoming Mule messages, serializing responses, validating payloads, Query parameters, URI parameters against RAML. 

Where are the HTTP, database configurations defined?

Global.xml

What is the purpose of a domain project?

The main purpose of a domain project is to have all the globally shared configurations for the projects. All the shared resources can be configured in a domain project. Mule applications can be associated only with one domain project. However, a domain project can be associated with multiple mule applications.

Does Cloudhub support Mule domain projects?

No, Mule domain projects neither supported in Cloudhub nor in Runtime Fabric. Domain projects are supported in on-premises environments.

Which connector is used for handling SOAP requests?

Web service Consumer.

How we can invoke REST or SOAP Services?

To invoke REST we can use HTTP and the Web service Consumer connector can be used to invoke SOAP services.

What is the use of Message Enricher?

In Mule 3, Message enricher is a component used to enrich the current message with additional information from a separate resource without disturbing the current payload.

Enricher is used in scenarios where the target system needs more information than the source system can provide. It calls an external system or doing some transformation to the current payload and saving it in a target variable.

Do we have Message Enricher in Mule 4? 

In Mule 4, We don't have a message enricher anymore. 

Now, every component is embedded with a target variable which solves the purpose. 

 

How do you override application properties?

You can configure your Mule application to automatically load properties from properties files based on different environments (Production, development, testing, QA) using property placeholders. 

1.  Create a properties file for each development environment in your Mule application.
2. Configure a property placeholder in your application to look for the environment at the time of launch.
3. Set environment variable one each for the different environment.

The property placeholder will then take up an environment variable value and based on that use the properties file.

How can we store sensitive data such as Client ID and Client Secret? 

Properties in Mule 4 can be encrypted to store sensitive data such as Client ID and Client Secret. We can encrypt a .yaml or .properties file using the secure properties module. For more details about the use of  secure properties: securing-configuration-properties-in-mule

How to install anypoint security suite

how-to-use-secure-properties-in-dw2

Give some examples of popular Mulesoft connectors? 

HTTP, File, FTP, SFTP, Database, Salesforce, SAP, AWS, etc.

Can you create a custom connector? 

Yes. 

When an API specification is published to Anypoint Exchange, it automatically generates a connector for it. You can find out a list of Mulesoft connectors here.

Advantages of Mulesoft Anypoint connectors? 

• It provides integration of Mulesoft application with different 3rd party systems like Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce, etc.
• It is easier to maintain and no need to spend time on optimization and security.
• It provides reusability which helps in speed-up development.

Is Mulesoft PaaS or SaaS? 

Mulesoft provides iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service). It provides connectivity across on-premises and SaaS applications.

In Mule4 how you can generate custom errors.

By using the Raise Error component

In Mule 4, how errors are handled in a mule flow?

When an error is thrown in Mule flow while processing an event first step is it stops normal flow execution and it will not go to the next components. Then depending on the error type either error will be caught and handled inside the error handling block or thrown up to its parent flow.

Where we can add an error handler in the Mule 4 application?

An error handler can only be added to

– A flow

- A private flow

– A Try scope

– An global error handler (outside of any flows) is then referenced to any of the error handling strategies.

Note: Error handler can not be added to subflows.

What is the Mule default error handler?

When there is no error handler defined for any flow or by using try scope, the Mule default error handler will be used. This default handler should be configured globally.

What if the default error handler not configured in the Mule application?

If the default error handler is not configured then Mule runtime will provide its own default behavior

– First, it stops the execution of the flow and logs information about the error.

– Implicitly and globally handles all errors thrown in Mule applications.

– It automatically rethrows the error.

– Most important we cannot configure it.

What are error scopes in mule4 to handle errors?

– On Error Continue scope

– On Error Propagate scope

 

Can you please explain the difference between these two error scopes in Mule4?

What is the use of Try scope in Mule4?

Try Scope is very useful when you need to group a set of events/ components and want to handle errors based on your specific requirements. It acts as a private flow inside the parent flow. For Unhandled errors, it propagates to its parent flow.

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