Service Catalog:Integration overview

Versions

OpenAPI Explorer uses version numbers to manage the major versions of cloud service API operations. For example, Service Catalog supports the API of the 2021-09-01 version. 2021-09-01 is an API version number instead of the date when the API was last updated. You are provided with the latest API data in each version.

Online debugging

You can call the API operations of Service Catalog in OpenAPI Explorer. Before you call the API operations of Service Catalog, you must understand the information about the API, including the API version, endpoints, and integration methods.

Online debugging page

You can call the API operations of Service Catalog on the online debugging page.

Endpoints

You can select an endpoint based on the region in which your resource resides to reduce latency. For example, if your Service Catalog resides in the China (Hangzhou) region, the public endpoint is servicecatalog.cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com, and the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) endpoint is servicecatalog-vpc.cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com.

• Public endpoints can be globally accessed.

• VPC endpoints are accessible only within a VPC in a specific Alibaba Cloud region. VPC endpoints provide the following benefits:

  • Higher security: VPC endpoints can be accessed only within a VPC. This provides higher security and privacy.

  • Faster response: VPC endpoints use the internal network environment to deliver faster responses than those of public endpoints. In addition, by using VPC endpoints, you are free from issues such as network latency and bandwidth limits.

  • Lower cost: VPC endpoints are accessed over an internal network.

For more information, see Endpoints.

User identities

After you log on to OpenAPI Explorer by using your Alibaba Cloud account, OpenAPI Explorer uses your Alibaba Cloud account to perform online debugging by default. An Alibaba Cloud account has permissions on all API operations. Security risks may arise if you use an Alibaba Cloud account to debug API operations online. We recommend that you call API operations or perform routine O&M as a Resource Access Management (RAM) user. Before you call API operations as a RAM user, grant the required permissions to the RAM user based on your business requirements. The RAM user must have the permissions to manage Service Catalog. For more information, see Use RAM for access control.

References

• Identity, credential, and authorization

• Throttling and quota management

Overview of integration methods

• Alibaba Cloud SDKs

  • Alibaba Cloud provides SDKs in multiple programming languages, including Java, C#, Go, Python, Node.js, TypeScript, PHP, and C++. You can integrate SDKs into your applications to directly call API operations. SDKs encapsulate information such as the signature logic, timeout mechanism, and retry mechanism and return structured response objects based on specifications. This facilitates development. For more information, see Alibaba Cloud SDKs.

  • You can use Service Catalog SDKs to call API operations in OpenAPI Explorer. For more information about the supported programming languages and how to install dependencies, see Service Catalog SDKs.

• Alibaba Cloud CLI

  • Alibaba Cloud CLI allows you to run aliyun commands to interact with Alibaba Cloud services and manage cloud service resources. For more information, see What is Alibaba Cloud CLI?

  • You cannot use Alibaba Cloud CLI to call the API operations of Service Catalog.

• ROS

  • ROS is an Alibaba Cloud service that simplifies the management of cloud computing resources. You can create a template to describe the cloud computing resources that you need, such as Elastic Compute Service (ECS) and ApsaraDB RDS instances, and the relationship between the resources. ROS automatically creates and configures all the resources based on the template to implement automated deployment and O&M. For more information, see What is ROS?

  • You cannot use ROS to call the API operations of Service Catalog.

• Custom encapsulation

  To make native HTTP calls, you must construct custom requests and sign the requests. For more information about the signature method, see List of operations by function and Request syntax and signature method V3.