Question

Using Appian as a Backend for High Volume API Requests - Best Practices and Performance Considerations?

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
September 18, 2024
6 replies
0 views

Hello Community,

We are currently using Appian for BPM-related processes, but recently we have started utilizing Appian as a backend service to handle multiple API requests in one of our services. We've defined REST services in Appian, and our clients are now calling these APIs, essentially treating Appian as a web server.

However, we are facing some performance challenges, including timeouts and long response times. We also conducted load testing, and the results were below our expectations in terms of performance under heavy loads.

My question is: based on your experience, is Appian designed to handle high API request loads in this manner (i.e., functioning like a web server)? Should Appian be used for such purposes, or should this approach be avoided due to potential limitations in handling large-scale API traffic?

Any best practices, optimization tips, or insights on the suitability of Appian for this use case would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you in advance!

kumara0180

In my opinion using Appian to be used as webserver would be over stretching Appian limitations. Yes it can do that, but should we be using Appian for that ? if you have to use anyways have you considered upgrading the hardware to improve the performance.

Appian is also coming up with EPEx for high amount of processing in near future and that would improve the performance to great extend. you can read about that

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O

olio644526Author

Thank you for the response. We have upgraded the hardware to enhance performance, but the improvement has not been noticeable.

There is no strict requirement to use Appian. If we determine that the issue stems from Appian's limitations, we are open to exploring other technologies and then using Appian solely to initiate a process.

kumara0180

Go through EPEx once. You can take part in beta program for EPEx and check the result. I am sure that you would see a lot of improvement in performance.

stefanhelzle0001

The Appian platform is not designed for such tasks. I suggest to contact Appian to discuss this use case.

somasundaram.d

Agreeing with Stefan, this is not an ideal problem statement that Appian as a platform is intended to solve. Please contact Appian Support to get more information and suggestions.

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rajeshs0011

Once we have designed a similar application and we witnessed slowness and performance issues. Thing is that, we can use start process to utilize load balancer but to get the output back from processes as request response we had to make use of activity chaining. Appian is not meant for such design, even the same is mentioned in docs/best practices also.

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