NB : Book focused on big scale API management, landscape and governance.

Not really adequate for building a single API.

The Challenge of API Management

  • API landscape : ensemble of API
  • interface / implementation / instance
  • API pillars : common to all APIs
  • maturity stages
  • By making stats data safely and easily available (properly anonymized and filtered), APIs create new value
  • 3 basic themes: scope, scale and standard

Scope

  • In other words, as your program’s scope expands, your collection of guidelines needs to expand appropriately
  • Pass from giving orders about API (APIs MUST use the following URL patterns) to giving guidance (HTTP APIs SHOULD use following URL patterns)
  • Variety is important at scale

Scale

  • The processes you use to design, implement, and maintain a single API are not always the same when you need to scale your ecosystem
  • Related to API landscape

Standards

  • One of the key shifts that happen when you begin managing at the landscape level instead of the API level is in the power of standards in providing consistent guidance for teams designing, implementing, and deploying APIs in your organization
  • A common thread that runs through the long­lived standards that have helped the web continue to be successful is the focus on standardizing the interaction between components and systems.
  • technology variety becomes a strength in a large ecosystem, and attempting to rein it in at the enterprise governance level can slow your program’s progress

Managing the API Landscape

  • As mentioned at the start of this chapter, there are two key challenges in the API management space: managing the life of a single API and managing the landscape of all the APIs