---
title: "Building a Business System Integration and Automation Platform at Shopify"
description: "Shopify needed a maintainable way to connect increasingly modular business systems whose interfaces ranged from SOAP and FTP to REST and GraphQL. The company evaluated Mulesoft but found that its proprietary XML and Java virtual machine stack isolated the team from Shopify’s development ecosystem and complicated access to internal services and infrastructure. It instead built a Ruby on Rails integration platform around minimal validation, transparent data transformations, flexible client support, security, reusable components, documentation, and request-level testing with WebMock. The implementation favors direct manipulation of JSON hashes because that keeps mappings visible, while acknowledging risks such as typos and complex mock management. After a year, the platform had 18 integrations, had migrated all Mulesoft applications, and enabled other teams to build integrations, with ongoing work on testing and onboarding."
---

# Building a Business System Integration and Automation Platform at Shopify

[Shopify](https://yomu.fyi/company/shopify) · 2023-10-18 · Apr 22, 2022

**Type:** Problem & solution

## Summary

Shopify needed a maintainable way to connect increasingly modular business systems whose interfaces ranged from SOAP and FTP to REST and GraphQL. The company evaluated Mulesoft but found that its proprietary XML and Java virtual machine stack isolated the team from Shopify’s development ecosystem and complicated access to internal services and infrastructure. It instead built a Ruby on Rails integration platform around minimal validation, transparent data transformations, flexible client support, security, reusable components, documentation, and request-level testing with WebMock. The implementation favors direct manipulation of JSON hashes because that keeps mappings visible, while acknowledging risks such as typos and complex mock management. After a year, the platform had 18 integrations, had migrated all Mulesoft applications, and enabled other teams to build integrations, with ongoing work on testing and onboarding.

## Context

As business systems became more modular and specialized, companies accumulated systems with differing technologies, interfaces, and integration capabilities. Shopify found that ad hoc connections, IPaaS tools, file transfers, and custom integrations became harder to manage as the number of systems grew. Mulesoft also had drawbacks for Shopify because its proprietary XML and Java virtual machine stack did not match Shopify’s technologies, while some internal services and infrastructure required hosting within Shopify’s cloud.

## Approach / What changed

Shopify built a business system integration platform on Ruby on Rails, using its existing infrastructure, training, observability, security practices, and internal services. The design emphasized minimal validation, transparency, flexibility across interfaces, security, and reuse. Implementation practices included version-controlled documentation, direct JSON-hash transformations, client support for diverse business systems, WebMock request-level tests, and shared components intended to make point-to-point integrations faster to build and maintain.

## Takeaways

- The platform had 18 integrations after one year and migrated all of Shopify’s Mulesoft applications; other teams were also building integrations on it.
- Directly transforming JSON hashes keeps data mappings visible, but introduces risks such as string-key typos and requires care when keys are reused.
- WebMock exposes URLs, query parameters, headers, and request bodies in tests; Mocha is used instead for cases such as SOAP where raw XML would reduce useful visibility.

**Tags:** [Architecture](https://yomu.fyi/topic/architecture), [Developer Experience](https://yomu.fyi/topic/developer-experience), [Migrations](https://yomu.fyi/topic/migration), [Observability](https://yomu.fyi/topic/observability), [Testing](https://yomu.fyi/topic/testing)

- Source: [Shopify](https://shopify.engineering/rails-business-systems-intergration-platform)
- Source URL: https://shopify.engineering/rails-business-systems-intergration-platform
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-08-30T15:26:45.333Z

[Read original post](https://shopify.engineering/rails-business-systems-intergration-platform)