Tyk 4.1 – faster time to value made easy with Open API Specification

Tyk 4.1 brings with it some exciting new capabilities, faster time to value and enhanced resilience and availability. Let’s take a closer look at what we’ve got for you!

Native support for Open API Specification (OAS)

Open source and open standards have been a part of Tyk’s DNA from the very beginning. With this release, we are bringing native support for OAS APIs and enabling design driven API management with OAS. Here’s what that means to product managers and developers:

Faster time to value

OAS provides a single source of truth that defines the behaviour of the organisation’s APIs from all points of view. By having standard, predictable and reliable API definitions and management, product managers and business owners will be enabling collaboration and reducing risk of misunderstanding in a multi-team environment, where everyone is focused on bringing valuable product capabilities to market. 

Enhanced developer productivity by using the tools you know

Developers can now work with developer tools that they are familiar with, meaning they no longer need to learn a totally new API specification language, or use a new UI to start managing APIs. Also, having a predictable and standardised API format makes it easy to integrate with other tools within the API ecosystem, further putting the focus on building things better and shipping faster.

What this looks like in practice is that developers can use the code editor of their choice with Tyk’s OAS API schema to write everything you need. They can also import your OAS definitions into Tyk with a single API call and then just sit back and relax while it automatically adds the Tyk OAS configuration fields. Oh, and it will even sort out authentication and create validation middleware in the gateway and because the APIs are fully OAS compliant, it will generate developer documentation for the portal straight from the API definition automatically.

If you’re ready to drive API adoption through clear and comprehensive documentation in familiar, standardised and globally accepted formats, then try out our early access to OAS now! Since this is an early access, we would love to hear from you about your experience. So, head on over to our  community forum and let us know if you have any questions, feedback and/or suggestions for us!

Enhanced high availability with the Multi-Data Centre Bridge (MDCB) Synchroniser 

Of course, with Tyk being Tyk, we would never give you just one exciting new feature at a time! Our 4.1 release also delivers enhanced resilience and availability through our improved MDCB synchroniser.

This new feature of MDCB enables API keys, certificates and OAuth clients to be synchronised to worker clusters when they first connect to MDCB, instead of fetching those resources on demand. In a nutshell, if the MDCB link or controller gateway goes down, you don’t automatically lose the data being processed through the gateway at that moment. Instead, the gateway will continue to function without the control plane, then re-synchronise as soon as it can. And as the worker gateways don’t have to retrieve resources from the controller gateway when a key is first used, there’s also a performance improvement. Nice. 

We have also added a whole host of other updates that you may be interested in. You can find out about them in our release notes here.

Why not book a demo to see Tyk in action and really get a feel for the latest features? 

Of course, if you just can’t contain your excitement and simply must have Tyk 4.1, you can sign up and get started with a free trial right now!

If you are already using Tyk and are wondering how to upgrade to the latest version, you will be happy to know that there are no breaking changes and you can follow our standard guide to upgrade.