A Unified Approach to Delivering APIs

kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com Not all APIs are the same. Even with RESTful approaches to delivering APIs they can be quite different.

As APIs grow and as we want to be able to connect apps to multiple inputs and endpoints, there's an increasing need to make the process easier, more streamlined, and interoperable.

One example of this is within the cloud computing industry. When using AmazonEC2 and Rackspace, developers have to write separate code to integrate with each platform.

Another example is with social networks, when pulling social streams from Facebook and Twitter, developers have to develop separate code for each provider as well.

An new approach to solving differences between APIs that deliver similar functionality, but use different approaches, is to build a unified API.

Unified APIs bring together multiple APIs into a single interface. Two examples of this are:
  • DeltaCloud API - With the Deltacloud API you can start an instance on an internal cloud, then with the same code start another on Amazon EC2 or Rackspace.
  • Windsoc API - Using Windsoc API developers can access Facebook, Twitter, GoogleBuzz and other social APIs using a single interface.
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Unified APIs do a lot of the work for developers, by providing a single interface to build against, as well as compensating for changes between APIs, and different versions of an API.

Cloud computing APIs and social network APIs have been around for a few years now, it makes sense that there is a need for a unified interface.

What other industries or types of APIs are in need of an unified API?