API, building an API but giving priority access for certain requests

Not sure how others have addressed this, but generally speaking what is the best practice for giving your own apps开发者_Python百科 priority treatment when it comes to using one of your own public APIs?

Use Cache Priority

Caching responses or interim calculations in RAM is typically the first optimization point because caching is easier than micro optimizing all your code. Controlling what goes into the cache and how long it stays presents a top level place to apply "priority treatment". I like the cache management approach better than thread priority because if you are under load delaying the execution of a request often creates complex thread pool problems and decreases overall server throughput.

Caching Based on Load (rather than on app ownership) will Expand the Resource Pie

We take the ram cache priority approach with MapLarge Tile Server and Geocoding API. However, we don't actually give our own apps priority, instead we base priority on request frequency and time required to render a response. Unless you have large numbers of low value api users, I would recommend doing something similar because this approach should reduce overall load and enables the server to handle more api requests.

I recently wrote a white paper that highlights the different load profiles of cached and non cached responses in a multi tenant api environment. You can see it here: http://maplarge.com/Tile-Server-Performance

API Policies can drive revenue If you have free or low paying users who are generating massive load you might want to review your business plan and consider instituting account based rate limits that match user revenue to server costs in a scalable way. If you do limit API users I would recommend having explicit and predictable policies so they can project usage and know when to purchase an API account upgrade.