Cloudize API Framework Version 23.2 Release

One of the things that we're most excited about in this version is the addition of support for ARM64 processors. ARM64 compute options, such as AWS Graviton-based machines, deliver comparable performance to similar Intel-based deployments at a much better price point (± 25% cost reduction). We intend to write a more detailed blog on a head-to-head performance comparison of an API running on the two architectures within the next month or two. That said, we see ARM64 as significant and have already migrated all of our internal workloads, including our new Cloudize Platform APIs (scheduled for release by the end of Q2), to ARM64 infrastructure.

Another significant step forward included in Version 23.2 is decoupling the Cloudize API Framework from the AWS SDK. It is no secret that we initially built our technology on AWS infrastructure. While we still believe they are a brilliant choice, customers may want or need to deploy on other cloud platforms such as Azure, GCP, or elsewhere. Version 23.2 still depends on a secret manager to deliver the database connection parameters to the framework but now provides the ability for the API application itself to inject that dependency into the framework at startup. This change makes the framework cloud-agnostic and presents more choices regarding where APIs built with the framework can be deployed.

In Version 23.1, we introduced support for branch fragments within our design tooling. Branch fragments are incredibly powerful and allow for the definition of complex types within API contracts that can accept one of many definitions, each with its own validation rules and, most importantly, without needing to write any code. Version 23.2 builds on that capability by adding typed support for branch fragments within the SDK code generator. This is a huge step forward in simplifying the downstream integration of APIs that implement these potent but potentially complex structures.

In addition, several technical enhancements are also included in this release. The framework now supports Node 20. The MongoDB interface has been upgraded to the new Version 5 driver, and we've upgraded to Typescript 5. In addition, our CloudFormation templates for well-architected API deployments now support both Intel and Graviton deployments on ECS using Fargate or EC2 clusters as capacity providers.

Whilst this release has primarily been focused on giving customers more choices on infrastructure options to run the technology, we have continued to focus on code quality and simplicity within the code base, and test coverage remains in the mid-90s.

Looking ahead, we expect that version 23.3, which is scheduled for release in Q3, will be a maintenance release, with the lion's share of our effort during the next two quarters being allocated to supporting multi-cloud deployments and web-enabling our API design tooling.