Updating and Maintaining Existing Airline System APIs using MuleSoft
Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, MAC (Metropolitan Airport Commission) is the governing body that runs the Minneapolis Airport and includes all operating departments in the airport.
Profile:
Home to hundreds of thousands of passengers annually, the Minneapolis Airport relies on innumerable vendors to ensure a smooth transportation experience for travelers. As such, MAC’s IT department is tasked with ensuring that all vendors and accompanying airlines are integrated and fully synced within their network system. Currently, all vendor and/or client systems vary between SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and REST (Representational State Transfer) services that integrate via APIs on the MuleSoft® Anypoint PlatformTM.
Â
Most of the vendor and client systems operate on their own hosted networks and thus, require heavily authenticated, secure Mule integrations so as to prevent data breaches to the outside world. Several applications also use Active MQ to process datasets whose numbers vary daily.
Â
In this project, MAC requested an upgraded Mule runtime version (3.9.3), upgraded Operating System (Windows 2019), and the maintenance/upgrade of existing platform APIs to help develop a seamless transition for the Airport’s processess.
The Solution
Upon meeting with the team at MAC to discuss their current operating environment, Apisero began targeting MAC’s biggest pain points: 1) an outdated Operating System lacking current market functionality and 2) bugged APIs that required review, maintenance, and significant upgrades to accomplish their end goal of seamless integrated data transactions.
Â
To alleviate these issues, Apisero worked to update the airport’s 4 (2 – QA, 2 – Production) network servers to the more robust Windows 2019 while upgrading their MuleSoft® platform to the recent 3.9.3 release.
Â
Working with a total of 41 established production APIs, Apisero then turned their sights to the functionality of these APIs with the desired requirements expressed by MAC. While 50% of the APIs in production were developed prior to Apisero’s project engagement, some of the APIs required bug fixes and/or system updates to maintain efficiency.
Â
The remaining system APIs that MAC utilized were built by Apisero developers after an extensive analysis of the airport’s current network with their business requirements. This process involved reviewing and analyzing MAC’s APIs for potential changes, pushing the code, and then testing the API in the environment for functionality prior to moving the API to production. As this project operated as a Managed Services contract, the Apisero developers worked alongside MAC’s dedicated team of MuleSoft® resources to ensure all updates reflected industry best practices while boosting the customer experience.
The Results
After the engagement, MAC’s old legacy system has been fully integrated with the new user interface installed in the Minneapolis Airport. The integrations developed and refined by the Apisero team provide crucial data transfers necessary for the daily operations of the Airport and serve to increase the satisfaction of all travelers.Â
