February 2018 Summaries

Postman 6.0 introduces Workspaces, a new feature designed to enhance collaboration and organization within the Postman app, benefiting both individual users and teams. Workspaces can be tailored around specific working topics and integrate elements such as collections and environments, streamlining API sharing and collaboration. For Postman Pro and Enterprise users, Workspaces will replace the Team Library, offering improved visibility and access to shared collections, as well as team activity monitoring and access permissions. Every Postman user can benefit from Workspaces, with free account holders able to create unlimited personal Workspaces, while non-account users receive a single default Workspace. It is recommended for Postman Pro and Enterprise teams to upgrade simultaneously to ensure consistent access to the new features.

Spotinst, an autonomous compute management platform founded in 2015, optimizes cloud compute costs by up to 80% for companies like Sony and HPE while ensuring high availability and performance through predictive analytics. The platform can be deployed on various cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, and GCP, leveraging discounts on spare capacity without compromising on availability. With offices in San Francisco, Tel Aviv, New York City, and London, Spotinst uses Postman extensively for API management and customer support. Solution architects and customer success teams use Postman to demonstrate and troubleshoot the Spotinst API, while engineers utilize Postman Collections and environments for development, testing, and simulating workflows. This integration facilitates efficient communication and problem-solving across engineering and non-engineering teams, enhancing the functionality and reliability of Spotinst's services.

Kamal is a Product Engineer at Postman, where he has been working for a year. His role involves using specific technologies to contribute to the development and enhancement of the Postman app, a tool widely used for API testing and development. Recently, he worked on an interesting project that showcases the app's capabilities. Kamal emphasizes the importance of understanding the full potential of the Postman app, suggesting that users should explore its features thoroughly. In addition to Postman, he has other preferred development tools, which aid in his engineering tasks. Kamal is also keen to share useful tips and tricks related to development and reveals a personal fact that adds a unique dimension to his professional persona.

Raygun, a software intelligence platform launched in 2013 and headquartered in Wellington, New Zealand, with a U.S. office in Seattle, is utilized by approximately 50,000 developers across over 120 countries to process billions of events each day. The platform records software errors and end-user performance profiles to aid technology companies in improving user experiences and software quality. The Raygun team employs 12 engineers to manage the vast data volumes and frequently uses Postman to streamline their development processes. Postman collections and environments facilitate efficient management and reuse of requests by organizing payloads and automating environment switches, reducing errors and saving time. Furthermore, the team uses Postman pre-request scripts to generate necessary variables like timestamps and session IDs for Raygun API POST requests, allowing developers to focus on specific payload elements while automating routine tasks.

Postman, a tool commonly used for testing APIs, can also interact with databases by leveraging REST APIs, allowing developers and testers to read and write to databases in environments where direct database querying is not feasible or convenient. This approach is particularly useful during development when working with local versions of databases, as it enables testing of internal database states not exposed by APIs and offers a simpler interface for those unfamiliar with SQL. Access can be achieved either by starting a local database server and sending requests via scripts in Postman or by using database providers like MySQL or Mongo that offer HTTP APIs. The text provides a walkthrough of setting up a database using Restdb.io, configuring a collection, and entering records, followed by instructions on setting up Postman to interact with the database, including specifying the URL, content type, and API key. Once set up, Postman can send requests to the database, allowing users to test and assert database responses, such as checking the existence of fields not exposed to users via API.

HarperDB, headquartered in Denver, Colorado, is a database company that focuses on IoT, app development, and HTAP, aiming to create easily manageable databases for developers of all skill levels. Their single model database supports both structured and unstructured data and is accessible via microservices or a REST API. The company utilizes Postman as an integrated development environment to demonstrate their technology, generate up-to-date API documentation, and facilitate a seamless introduction for new developers through a comprehensive quickstart guide. This guide walks developers through key processes such as authorization, schema creation, table setup, and query submission. HarperDB's development team is responsible for unit and integration testing, using Postman to write assertions and tests that ensure endpoint functionality during product updates. Continuous integration tools are configured to run the full test suite before any new build, and Postman monitors are employed to check the functionality of their public-facing websites every 15 minutes, with Slack alerts notifying the team of any issues detected.