The Oracle API Platform Cloud Service is a 3rd generation API management platform (refer to the Preface for further context) built almost entirely from the ground up to satisfy modern integration requirements such as real-time access to information via REST APIs.
As its name suggests, the platform is a cloud-based Platform as a Service (PaaS), meaning that it can be purchased in a subscription-based model, metered or non-metered.
The platform supports the full life cycle of API management, from API design (using Apiary, which is described later in the chapter) to continuous integration, implementation, promotion, operations, and decommissioning/retirement.
The platform is fully hybrid meaning that it can be deployed in cloud computing but also on-premises. It's lightweight and equally well suited for Microservices Architecture, in other words, 3rd generation.
But what exactly is a 3rd generation API Platform in the context of Oracle product offering?
This concept is better understood by understanding the chronological evolution of Oracle's API offering throughout time.
In the following section it is described how Oracle's offering evolved from an Enterprise Service Bus centric architecture, to then becoming a SOA/SCA feature-rich (monolithic) platform, and then evolving into an architecture that is distributed, lighter weight, and therefore, suitable for hybrid and microservices architectures.
https://www.slideshare.net/capgemini/microservices-and-soa
