The evolutThe evolution of the API’s used byMoneysupermarket.com’s highly successful Car Insurance application. Faced with having to re-engineer the entire application to meet the increasingly demands of security, accuracy & scale – how we incrementally refactored our application to create an OAUTH 2.0 API using Layer 7ion of the API’s used byMoneysupermarket.com’s highly successful Car Insurance application. Faced with having to re-engineer the entire application to meet the increasingly demands of security, accuracy & scale – how we incrementally refactored our application to create an OAUTH 2.0 API using Layer 7

1. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
How Moneysupermarket.com Created APIs Without Starting from Scratch

2. 2
About Moneysupermarket.com
Price Comparison site founded in 1999
Vertical Search Engine, Digital Marketing Company
Grown from simple mortgages comparison to other
financial and insurance product
Became a PLC in 2007
Turnover in 2012 around 200m
Car Insurance the largest single market
Group includes a number of acquisitions including
Moneysavingexpert.com

3. 3
Our Development is ‘Entrepreneurial’
Reducing our duplication is
a key technical objective

4. 4
Car Insurance Comparison
The big
challenges…
• Generating personalised accurate data in real time
• Keeping it simple for customers
How do we
source our data
• Source quotes in real time from up to 100 sources
• Originally screen scraping technology but predominantly web service interaction
• Middleware aggregates the data to give a single results set for customers
• Pricing accuracy a key requirement as well as speed
Customer
experience
• Simplifying quote process
• Remember details to save filling in again
• Renewals & reminders

5. 5
Car Insurance 2010
No real middleware
separation
Silos & duplication
Heavily database reliant
Few real services
Lacking real standards
Web
(Presentations, Filtering, Business Logic)
Data
Services
Provider Integration
Quote Storage
Providers

6. 6
Business Goals for 2011
Mobile Apps ABI DataMore quotes
Faster!!
Do more in
parallel
Full re-platform not
an option

7. 7
Business Logic
Our Approach
Recycle - Split the
application in half
RESTful domain lifted
from the domain model
of the application
Layer 7 API Gateway as
the abstraction
Secure data services
available through OAuth
2.0
Replacement services
slotted in as needed
Data
Services
Provider Integration
Quote Storage
Providers
Web(Presentation Logic)
API Layer
(Authentication)
Quote Engine

8. 8
Don’t Forget About…
We didn’t define our API standards up front – 6 Gotchas
Terminology
• Does your business have terms that nobody else uses?
Date Formats
• Different tech use different formats particularly with JSON
REST or SOAP
HATEOAS
• Relative or Absolute Links
XML or JSON as a base
• Layer 7 or other tools can help translate but things get lost in translation!
Common API structures
• Consistency makes a big difference to consumers

9. 9
Where Layer 7 Fits In
Service registry
Security for services & customers
• OAuth Toolkit
Standardise behaviour & structure
• Errors, response codes, data formats, SOAP vs REST
Ideal for prototyping & sharing new services with partners

10. 10
Car Insurance - Today
New Quoting engine
Additional client
applications
Some services replaced,
some left as they are
Phased often independent
delivery, presentation layer
unaffected
Quoting Engine
Providers
Desktop Web
API Layer
MobileApp
Mobile Web
Reference
data
Customer

11. 11
What about the rest of the estate?
Creating Reusable APIs Has
Become Our Standard Delivery
Pattern
• Mobile Web
• Energy Club with
MoneysavingExpert.com
• Partner Product Feeds
• Transaction Logging
• Preference Management
• All services in Layer 7 as standard
Not everything needs to be
thrown away
Quoting
Engine
API Layer
Reference
data
Customer
Tracking Preferences

12. More Information & Questions
chris.owen@moneysupermarket.com