Brief Overview

Welcome to intro guide to ACE! This is a great place to start to learn what ACE is and how it works, what problems it can solve.

What is ACE?

ACE (API Composition Engine) is a low-code/no-code tool to build tailored APIs.

It's main use is integration of core business systems, 3rd party services and frontend applications. It's a great fit for building API layers and BFFs (Backend for Frontend).

ACE can consume different protocols, data structures and authentication mechanisms.

Key Concepts

ACE uses YAML configuration files to define APIs and their logic. API configuration files describe API structure, flow files describe API logic and schema files describe data structures used in APIs.

Flows consist of steps, which are building blocks of API logic. Steps can perform various actions, such as calling external APIs, transforming data, implementing logic, connecting to databases and more.

Steps can be executed sequentially or in parallel, for example to make multiple parallel API calls at the same time.

Flows can also call other flows, which allows to reuse logic and build more complex APIs.

There are two main components in the ACE - Designer and Runtime .

Designer

Designer is meant to be used by Domain Experts to connect APIs by providing of workflow logic and mapping logic between services. It is a low-code/no-code tool that allows to build APIs and flows visually. ACE Designer integrates directly with Git to provide versioning and collaboration capabilities and is available as a Web or desktop application.

Runtime

ACE runtime is service which uses configuration created by Designer and uses this configuration to run APIs.