Kong Konnect Boosts GraphQL Support, Secure Automation, Service Catalog, and API Analytics

At Kong, our mission is to deliver the best API lifecycle management experience for the cloud native era. Driven by our dedication to meeting the dynamic demands of modern end-to-end API management, we've introduced an array of new Kong Konnect features in April, enhancing functionality and elevating the user experience.

This blog post will explore these latest innovations and illustrate how they can transform your API management process, enabling your organization to excel in today’s rapidly evolving, cloud native landscape.

Multi-protocol support with enhanced GraphQL policies

Kong Gateway is already the most popular multi-protocol API gateway, supporting a wide range of protocols including REST/HTTP, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSocket, UDP, SOAP/Web Services, and Kafka. Kong Gateway is the go-to choice for many organizations with over 1,000 community and enterprise Kong traffic management plugins — covering functions like authentication, authorization, rate limiting, request enforcement, caching, route manipulation, and observability policies,.

Today, we're thrilled to announce that the powerful GraphQL-specific enhancements of Kong Gateway are now available via Kong Konnect. One such crucial enhancement is the GraphQL Rate Limiting plugin, which enables rate limiting based on the nature of the GraphQL queries rather than the endpoint. This feature allows API clients using GraphQL to be rate-limited based on the business domain encapsulated by your GraphQL schema, offering a more granular and flexible approach to rate limiting.

Secure automation with System Accounts

Secure automation is essential for modern API lifecycle management, with DevOps, GitOps, and SecOps practices being used to ensure APIs are reliable, high-quality, secure, and aligned with best practices. We at Kong have termed this concept as APIOps. To enable secure automation, we've introduced a new capability in Kong Konnect called System Accounts.

System Accounts can be created without a verified email address, reducing administrative overhead associated with managing individual user accounts. This feature allows a System Account to be used as part of automation or integration that isn't tied to any person’s identity, ensuring secure automation throughout your API management process.

Figure 1: Manage Tokens within the System Accounts

Enhanced Service Hub context for each service

Service Hub, Kong Konnect’s service registry, enables effortless discovery, cataloging, and management of services across multiple environments, clouds, zones, and teams. We've recently introduced new features that offer a more comprehensive view of a service for both service owners and consumers. Service owners can now document their service capabilities more thoroughly, while service consumers benefit from easier discovery of existing services to accelerate their application development by leveraging existing API functionality.

Figure 2: Easier-to-use, more intuitive user experience in Service Hub

These new capabilities include optimized descriptions, placement of information, and rendering of data such as markdown files and API specs. You can now view analytics information, like traffic and error rates, for each Service Package directly from the homepage within Service Hub. Additionally, you can visualize API specifications (OpenAPI Spec) within a Service Version detailed view and API documentation as part of the Service Package view. Other enhancements include downloading API specs directly from the Service Version page, viewing gateway configuration details in YAML form, and managing multiple markdown files within the Service Package, which can be published and rendered in the Dev Portal.

Figure 3: Multiple markdown files in Service Hub

Dynamic report creation via API analytics

Our new API analytics custom report generation UI simplifies report creation and offers additional capabilities such as chart preview, Runtime Group, and Gateway Service as new dimensions to filter and group by — as well as a more advanced filtering experience. These enhancements ensure that you have real-time operational insights through customized active reports, allowing you to maintain the health of your APIs and detect issues before they become critical.

Figure 4: Enhanced custom report creation

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