Lesson 4 of 5
Products and analytics
8 min
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A deployed proxy is callable, but nobody can use it responsibly until it is published with documentation, terms and a way to get credentials. API Management does that with products, the developer hub and applications. Once traffic flows, analytics tell you who is calling, how much, how fast and how often it fails.
Products, applications and keys
SAP's tutorials define a product as a bundle of one or more API proxies that you publish so developers can consume them. A consumer developer finds the product in the developer hub (earlier material calls it the API business hub enterprise), creates an application that subscribes to it, and receives the application's key, and where configured a secret. Every call then carries that key, which is how policies and analytics know which consumer is calling.
- BundleProduct Fleet Order Services contains the order status and delivery tracking proxies.
- PublishThe product appears in Contoso's developer hub with documentation and terms.
- SubscribeGreat Lakes Fleet Services' developer creates an application subscribed to the product.
- Key issuedThe application's key appears in its details; the customer stores it in their portal.
- Call and measureEvery call carries the key; quotas and analytics are tracked per application.
Designing products
- Bundle by consumer need, not by backend: Fleet Order Services makes sense to a customer; S/4HANA Sales APIs does not.
- Keep internal and external products apart, so an internal-only proxy never appears in a partner's subscription by accident.
- Write documentation for the consumer: purpose, authentication, example requests, error bodies, limits and support contact.
- Decide who approves subscriptions. For partners, Contoso requires approval by the account owner before a key is active.
- Record per product who owns it, which contract covers it, and its quota.
Analytics
SAP's learning material describes real-time analytics in API Management for API usage, latency and errors, and the Monitor area opens an advanced API analytics dashboard for business users and API developers. Use it to answer four questions every week of hypercare: which applications call which APIs and how much; how response time splits between the proxy and the backend; which status codes are rising; and whether any consumer is close to its quota.
| Signal in analytics | Likely meaning | Who acts |
|---|---|---|
| Rising 401 or 403 for one application | Expired or wrong key, or a revoked subscription | API owner contacts the consumer |
| Rising 429 or quota errors | Consumer outgrowing its quota, or a looping client | Account owner and API owner |
| Rising 5xx with normal proxy latency | Backend failures on CMP or Cloud Connector | Integration and Basis teams |
| High total latency, mostly backend time | Slow S/4HANA query or missing index | Kenji's development team |
| Traffic still on v1 near its retirement date | Consumer has not migrated | API owner, with a dated reminder |
What would you do?
Two weeks after go-live, analytics show Great Lakes Fleet Services' application making 40,000 calls a day against a quota of 10,000, with most calls rejected. The customer complains that the API is unreliable. What should Contoso do first?
- Products bundle proxies; applications subscribe to products and receive keys.
- Design products around consumer needs and keep internal and external products apart.
- Analytics show usage, latency and errors per API and application.
- Use analytics as evidence in hypercare and in conversations with consumers.
Check your understanding · not graded
Lesson check
1. What does an API product bundle?
2. How does a consumer developer get an API key?
3. Analytics show rising 5xx errors while proxy processing time is normal. Where is the problem most likely?
4. Why keep internal and external products apart?