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Kong API Gateway¶
Kong Gateway is an open-source / commercial API gateway — a reverse proxy that sits in front of backend services and handles routing, authentication, rate limiting, request/response transformation, and protocol mediation via a plugin architecture.
Stub page — minimal viable for the Datalex modernization ingest. Expand on future Kong-internals sources.
Role in the Datalex modernization¶
In Datalex's airline-retailing modernization (AWS EBA, 2026), Kong serves two functions that make it load-bearing for the incremental migration:
- REST↔SOAP protocol translation. The legacy n-tier system exposes SOAP services while the new Spring Boot microservices speak REST. Kong translates between the two so new and old components interoperate during the transition — a concrete backward-compatibility mechanism.
- Dynamic routing between existing and modernized services. Kong supports routing requests to either the existing or the modernized implementation, complementing the business service proxy that implements the Strangler Fig migration.
It also fronts the agentic-AI workstream, with Cognito providing authentication for the multi-agent booking assistant. (Source: sources/2026-10-01-aws-accelerating-airline-retailing-innovation-datalex-modernization)
Compared to Amazon API Gateway¶
Kong is a vendor-neutral gateway that runs anywhere (self-managed or on Kong's cloud), whereas Amazon API Gateway is AWS-managed with tighter IAM/Lambda integration. Teams that need rich protocol transformation (e.g. SOAP) or portability across clouds often reach for Kong.
Seen in¶
- sources/2026-10-01-aws-accelerating-airline-retailing-innovation-datalex-modernization — Kong as the REST↔SOAP translation + dynamic-routing gateway during Datalex's Strangler-Fig modernization.