When it comes to API performance in Open Banking, many participating banks don’t spend a lot of time, money or energy monitoring the sandbox environment. And, in a way, that’s understandable. After all, public-facing APIs are surely more important.
But sandboxes can tell you a lot of things about API performance – and there’s no downside to making sure they’re right.
Ignoring your API sandbox is like not bothering to do a dress rehearsal before a show. Sure, everyone knows their places and their lines; the lighting cues have been set; the sets have been built. But why wouldn’t you want to ensure that everything is as it should be – before the house is packed with critics and fans?
Our point is this: MONITOR YOUR API PERFORMANCE. For every API you own, offer and consume.
OK, we’re stepping off our soapbox now. On to the week’s API performance highlights… and by highlights, we mean lowlights.
We had actually pulled this for our July API performance report, coming in a bit – the graph shown is the weekly graph as there were too many failures for the monthly graph to load properly. These failures were all connection reset errors and have appeared throughout the month.
It’s for the Barclays Personal Sandbox in the Open Banking UK Sandboxes collection, and it was in the Red Zone with a CASC score of 5.05. Now, did this take Barclays down? No, of course not. But wouldn’t you want to see what’s making it go full tilt in the sandbox?
In other news – on the production side – Gemini in the Exchanges collection decreased by 13% from 9.12 (in the Green Zone) to 7.92 (in the Yellow Zone).
3commas in the Exchanges collection decreased by 19% from 8.39 (in the Green Zone) to 6.77 (in the Yellow Zone). This was owing to a large number of outliers resulting from slow server processing time from the 28th onward. Yikes.
And now we move on to our favorite subject:
Why doesn’t the US Government care about their API Performance?
US Census Bureau in the US Government collection decreased by 22% from 8.62 (in the Green Zone) to 6.66 (in the Yellow Zone). This was due to a gradual increase in server processing time starting near the beginning of the month and then gradually accelerating this week. These APIs also saw a number of 500 responses throughout the week also contributing to the down turn in CASC score.
FEMA in the US Government collection decreased by 33% from 7.55 (in the Yellow Zone) to 5.04 (in the Red Zone). This was due to a large outage affecting a number of their monitored endpoints which saw connections to the API time out after 60 seconds.
Dept of Energy in the US Government collection was in the Red Zone with a CASC score of 3.58, for cryin’ out loud.
In a fast-moving world, perhaps there is something slightly reassuring about an API that is consistently bad. No real progress this week with the outlier rate going up by 0.69% points to 35.0%/ The gap in outliers during the middle of the week was due to the API returning some client-side error responses, not because of some magical improvement sadly.
Other API performance News
- Revolut in the Open Banking UK Production category takes the overall title for best API again this week with a CASC score of 9.78, down from 9.82 last week.
- Contentful in the GGV Capital API-First category is the fastest API again this week with an average latency of 49 ms, down from 51 ms last week.
- HSBC Bank (Personal) is the best-performing bank in the Open Banking UK Production category with monitored AISP (non-consent) endpoints again this week with a CASC score of 9.35.
- Dept of Energy in the US Government category is the overall worst performing API again this week with a CASC score of 3.58, down from 3.82 last week.
- 8 categories are topped by an API with a CASC score of 9.50 or more, down from 9 last week.
- 14 categories are topped by an API with a CASC score of 9.00 or more, the same as last week.
- 1 categories have bottom API with a CASC score of 9.00 or more, the same as last week.
- 8 categories have bottom API with a CASC score of 8.00 or more, down from 15 last week.
- 4 APIs (Barclays Personal Sandbox in the Open Banking UK Sandboxes collection with a CASC score of 5.77, Allied Irish Bank Sandbox in the Open Banking UK Sandboxes collection with a CASC score of 4.57, Dept of Energy in the US Government collection with a CASC score of 3.58, FEMA in the US Government collection with a CASC score of 5.04) are in the Red Zone with a CASC score of less than 6.00 this week, the same as last week.
