API gateway environments

The API Gateway offers several environments to project teams to utilise as part of their service offering. Here we set out the expected usage of each.

Production

This environment is used to proxy live requests from a client’s production system to the production service. This is generally the environment that will be used day-to-day. Integration with the production environment of a service will require approval from the service owner. This environment will be updated manually.

Sandbox

This environment is representative of the Production environment in terms of the versions of the API being offered and the connectivity options. However, the data should be considered non-live/mocked or obfuscated. The intention of this environment is that it is used to test an application's connectivity to a system, without fear of undiscovered bugs in the integration adversely affecting the production instances of a service. Integration with this environment of a service does not require approval from the service owner, so it is ideal for running PoC against. The environment is protected from high load by enforced quotas on consumers. This environment gets automatically updated by pushing to a valid GIT acceptance branch.

QAS/Staging/Acceptance

This environment is intended for internal use by the service development team. It should not be shared with the wider development community and requires approval from the service owner for usage. It is expected that most teams will use this environment to validate new versions of an implementation before deployment to production. This environment gets automatically updated by pushing to a valid GIT test branch.

UAT/Test

This environment is for development teams to test their implementation or design ideas against. It should not be shared with the wider development community and requires approval from the service owner for usage. This environment gets automatically updated by pushing to a valid GIT feature branch.