API: The Backbone of Software Industry
Today we can see around us, how the technology is constantly changing, users are influencing towards apps and data in all new ways and big organizations are undertaking IT and digital transformations.
What is an API?
An API (Application Program Interface) refers to a set of tools, protocols or routines that are used for building an application. An API informs software how it must interact. Whenever you open an application like Whatsapp, Facebook or LinkedIn, etc., to send messages, share a post or upload a picture, you are using an API.
In other words, API’s are all about connection, and is a way to integrate data from one source into another source, such as a web service or mobile app.
Who invented API?
The API was invented by a man named Roy Fielding’s and his dissertation named ‘Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures’ which was delivered by him in the year 2000.
How does API’s work?
Imagine you are at a restaurant sitting at the table to order your food with a menu of choices to order from, there is a waiter and the kitchen is the provider who will fulfill your order. You need to communicate your order to the kitchen in order to get the food on your table. You need someone to connect you to the chef who prepares it. That’s where the waiter or API- enters into the picture. The waiter takes your order, delivers it to the kitchen, telling the chef what to do, then it delivers the response back to you.
Types of API’s
There are various types of API’s available that feign to be different in order to suit the specific needs and provide particular tools.
- Production API: this type of API sends the data from the database to the app so that users can read it. This is done on demand and it can return data to only those users who can see it.
- Development API: this is also known as fake API and works on the client till the Production API is available.
- Web service API: this type of API’s is commonly used in web applications and are a part of Service Oriented Architecture which is mostly preferred by large organizations. This also includes Representational State Transfer and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).
- Source code API: this type of API’s offers libraries of object and classes and is used as development projects to create a composite application.
- Fuzzing API: this type of API returns data in the same way as the client wants it and uses random data to generate various problem statements.
Future of API’s
The future of API’s is very wide as we can see that the software development world is constantly changing these days. Following are some of the future benefits-
- Improved application: API makes it very easy to improve existing applications. For example, if a vendor has released a product and its associated API, the community can take advantage of this and can make on top of what the company has released. This process is very much similar to open source software which is very useful and helpful for developers.
- Automation: Human errors are highly eliminated from business processes with the help of automation, which results in overall increased efficiency. Leveraging an open API means that you can move towards a more automated world.
- Developed IT Management methods: Newly developed methods like ChatOps and DevOps rely uponAPI’s to facilitate communication between various software integrations. An open API makes it easy to manage these kind of setups. Due to the involvement of API’s, IT teams can implement, maintain and troubleshoot their integrations without interacting with the API endpoints.
- Reporting: These days, Big data and analytics has become a big concept and one can easily get the data with the use of API’s. And not only this, the increasing popularity of API’s, users can collect data from multiple sources so that they have a complete dataset with much more useful information.
With these innovations happening each and every other day, the API era has become much more exciting. However, keeping pace with the changes and knowing how to increase benefits can be a tricky thing. So, hire a company like Tech Pathway to streamline your API integration in one of the easiest and most efficient way to ensure that you are all equipped with the latest trends and maximize your value in the market.