The Strategic Importance of BaaS
Jeffrey West

Jeffrey West
Who Am I?
• BaaS Engineering Coach at Apigee
• 10+ years in Middleware
implementation, integration,
development & product
management
• Apache Committer

Context
3

4
(m) obile
B ackend
a s
a
S ervice
Datastore
Push
Notifications
Connections /
Social
Location
Users
…and more
Application

Building Systems of Engagement with Edge API BaaS
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Systems of
Record
Apigee Edge: Intelligent API Platform
Systems of
Engagement
App Developers
DatabaseERPCRM
Data
Warehouse
Data Lake
Partner AppsConsumer Apps Employee Apps Insights

Systems of Engagement
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©2015 Apigee. All Rights Reserved.
Web Scale
10’s of thousands requests/sec
…across multiple data centers

Scaling Usergrid to 10,000 Req/s w/ Gatling
• 10k test run:
– 35 c3.xlarge Tomcat Nodes
– 9 c3.4xlarge C* nodes
– 6 m3.large ES nodes
• Closing test ~7,800/s:
– 15 c3.xlarge Tomcat Nodes
– 9 c3.4xlarge C* nodes
– 6 m3.large ES nodes
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Strategic Value
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Speed
10

Speed
…to proof of value
…to deploy
…to change
…to ENGAGE
– Customers
– Partners
– Employees
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©2015 Apigee. All Rights Reserved.

How?
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Organization
Organization
Organization
Application
DevicesUsers Groups
Security Roles
Collection
Data / Collections
Entity
{…}Entity
{…}Entity
{…}
Application
DevicesUsers Groups
Security Roles
Entity
{…}Entity
{…}Entity
{…}
Collection
Data / Collections
Entity
{…}Entity
{…}Entity
{…}

API BaaS – Users, Roles & Security
• Organization administrator
accounts
• Registration & Login for your app
• End user credentials
• Organization-level client ID and
shared secret
• Application-level client ID and
shared secret
• Hierarchical Groups
• Fine-Grained User/Group/Role/
Permission model
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But I just want to store data!
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REST API
GET / PUT / POST / DELETE
Scalable, Multi-tenant
Persistence (Single Cluster)

Apigee API BaaS:
Powered by Apache Usergrid
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• Apache Open Source Mobile Backend as a Service
• REST API for easy interaction from any platform
• SDKs available for iOS / Android / Javascript
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http://usergrid.apache.org

The Usergrid Stack
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Built on Horizontally Scalable Technologies

Built on Horizontally Scalable Technologies
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©2015 Apigee. All Rights Reserved.
( )

API-Driven Data Access w/ Query
• REST Semantics
– GET, PUT, POST, DELETE
• Filtering:
– GET http://api.usergrid.com/MyOrg/MyApp/books?ql=select * where title contains 'ta*'
– GET http://api.usergrid.com/MyOrg/MyApp/books?ql=select * where title contains 'tale’
– GET http://api.usergrid.com/MyOrg/MyApp/books?ql=select * where title = 'A Tale of Two Cities'
• Limit
– GET http://api.usergrid.com/{org}/{app}/{collection}?limit=5&ql=where status='active’
• Location:
– GET http://api.usergrid.com/{org}/{app}/{collection}?ql=select * where location within {d} of {x, y}
• Cursors
– GET http://api.usergrid.com/MyOrg/MyApp/users?ql=select * where name =
’John*'&limit=50&cursor=LTIxNDg0NDUxNDpnR2tBQVFFQWdITUFDWFJ2YlM1emJXbDBhQUNBZFF
BUUQyMVZneExfRWVLRlV3TG9Hc1doZXdDQWRRQVFIYVdjb0JwREVlS1VCd0xvR3NWT0JRQQ
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Working with Graph & NoSQL Data
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Graph Data Persistence: Entities & Connections
• Entities
– Objects / Documents representing an Entity
• Collections
– Logical grouping of Entities
• Connections / Entity Relationships
– Graph Data Structure
– /{collection}/{entityA}/{verb}/{collection}/{entityB}
– /Users/me/likes/Products/iPhone6
– /Recipes/Bread/includes/Ingredients/Flour
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User
A
Product
A
User
B
User
C
Likes>>
<<Liking

• De-normalization and model the data based on the way you expect to use it. Use
connections to reflect relationships (which may or may not be based on “keys”)
• SDKs for seven languages can simplify app development, or just use “curl”, Apache
HTTP Client, or your favorite browser tool.
Designing for Apigee Edge API BaaS
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Device
Device
Device
Device
Notification
Preferences User
Application
Notification
Preferences User
Consent

File Storage: Larger JSON Data & Binary Assets
• Purpose: Store binary files such as images, ZIP files and even large JSON
objects which do not need to be indexed
• Files can be attached to any entity:
– curl -H "Authorization: Bearer ${TOKEN}" -X POST -F
name='max.jpg' -F file=@max.jpg 'https://api.usergrid.com/
{org}/{app}/{collection}/{entity}'
• Retrieve your file by specifying a MIME type to accept:
– curl -H "Accept: image/jpeg" -H "Authorization: Bearer $
{TOKEN}" -X GET -o max_webcast.jpg 'https://
api.usergrid.com/{org}/{app}/{collection}/{entity}'
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Engaging with your Users
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88% of emails are never opened
84% of Facebook posts are never viewed
71% of tweets are never read
98% of SMS/MMS messages are opened and read

Push Notifications
• Notification Providers
• Narrowcast / Broadcast
– One User’s device
– All Devices
– All Devices in a Geo
– Only iOS / Android

Flexible Notification Targeting
Push Notification to 20 Miles of a store location
POST https://api.usergrid.com/
jeffreyawest/sandbox/devices;ql=“location
within 32186.9 of 34.427514,-118.535013”/
notifications
Push Notifications to a group of users
POST https://api.usergrid.com/
jeffreyawest/sandbox/groups/capos/
notifications
POST https://api.usergrid.com/
jeffreyawest/sandbox/groups/soldiers/
notifications
Push Notifications to a group of users in a certain location
POST https://api.usergrid.com/
jeffreyawest/sandbox/groups/capos/
users;ql=/devices;ql=“location within
32186.9 of 034.427514,-118.535013”/
notifications
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DEMO
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Roadmap
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What’s Next for Usergrid
• Grow the community!
• Blueprints Driver Release!
• Service abstraction
• Indexing closer to real-time
• Larger Clusters
• Distributed Work System
• Encryption & Security
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Application Performance Monitoring from Apigee
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Q & A
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