Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)#
Q: Do I need to write my integration in C#?#
No — the API Specification is language-neutral.
The Toolkit Services communicate via gRPC, so they are also language-neutral.
However, we do provide NuGet Packages that will definitely speed up your development.
They provide:
- Model classes to help with JSON serialization
- REST API stubs and service interfaces to help write back-end services
- ASP.NET implementations of the network protocol — e.g. transferring data chunks
- Pre-compiled gRPC clients for the services
Q: Do I need to use the Toolkit Services?#
No — but they can significantly reduce development work.
The RTA session model can be awkward to retrofit into an existing environment, so you can save a lot of time by dropping-in a self-contained implementation. The Session Service provides support for all the RTA features, including:
- all session metadata, including extended details
- query support, trans-piling requests to SQL
- filter support, by producing the session metamodel
- describing relationships between sessions
- providing extra indirection to compose data from different services
Adding self-contained microservices and some gRPC integration should be significantly less intrusive for your data pipeline.
You can probably achieve a more seamless integration by implementing the RTA API Specification directly against stores in your data environment, which will reduce data duplication and synchronization logic. We recommend starting out with the implementation toolkit and reviewing after initial integration is complete.
Q: Can I do data queries using this interface?#
No — only metadata queries (which could include aggregate values).
RTA will happily integate into environments that do have more sophisticated query services.