Hopefully you aren't tired of reading about the new features included in the RSA Archer Platform 6.4 release, because we aren't done yet! I have the pleasure of introducing to you all a brand new API for the RSA Archer platform that speaks your language instead of like a computer, and that enables you to point powerful BI Tools directly at your Archer data.
For a while now, the RSA Archer platform has had two main APIs, the SOAP or Web Services API and the RESTful API. These have now been grouped together in what we are calling the Platform API. The new Content API differs from the Platform API in that it is interacted with and returns information in a format that is much more familiar to what users experience from the User Interface (UI). Instead of working in the language of back office objects that represent Archer metadata (Solutions, Fields, Layouts, Applications, DDEs, etc), the Content API instead translates the metadata and content into familiar front office entities (Risks, Business Units, Loss Events, Vulnerabilities, Fields by name, etc) and exposes them programmatically for consumption by BI Tools or custom applications.
Put visually, here's how the three channels are setup to translate and expose Archer metadata.
What this means programmatically is that instead of receiving a "computer" output from the Platform API that deals with Boolean values, HTML laced text, and User/Group/Field IDs that require additional calls to lookup and translate to the "UI Friendly" names like this:
You will instead receive a more "human" output, which references things by Alias, UI friendly name, and arrays, like this:
This format also aligns very well with the data structure that common BI Tools, such a Power BI and QlikView, expect thus enabling many of the popular BI Tools to connect directly to the new Content API. Some BI Tools may require an additional connector that performs a few minor translations on the Content API output into tool specific formatting, and RSA is looking at options for partnering with these companies to produce and distribute connectors for those tools.
Tableau is one of the BI Tools which requires a connector to work with the new Content API, and as of this blog I'm happy to announce we have established an integration with them. Details of the integration, as well as the connector download files, are available on the Tableau Web Data Connector Integration page.
For more detailed information on the Content API, including the endpoints it includes, sample response and output, and more, please review the RSA Archer 6.4 Content API Reference Guide.
I hope you are as excited about this feature as I am, and additionally hope you'll join me on the Free Friday Tech Huddle sessions this Friday to see the Content API and BI Tool integration in a live demo!
Happy Archering, everyone!
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