I spoke with Phil Windley (@windley) over at Brigham Young University (BYU) about their API strategy this morning. BYU is bringing together API providers and consumers, to establish a coordinated strategy for delivering designing, deploying, managing, and integrating with APIs across campus--an effort being led by CIO Kelly Flannagan (@kelflanagan).
As part of their latest API effort, BYU is focusing in on the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to campus resources:
- Students
- Instructors
- Classrooms
- Classes
- Courses
The API team is still struggling with a handful of technical details like how to deal with unique identifiers, and relationship between resources, but overall they are on a healthy path when it comes to getting their API designed, and deployed for use at the institution. I’m interested in seeing how fast they progress with a top down approach to APIs, vs the bottom up efforts I’m seeing at institutions like UC Berkeley.
I will be talking their team regularly, about their design, deployment, management, and integration strategy. I want to make sure and document the process all along the way, and share real-time updates that other universities can follow along, or possibly collaborate with us when it comes to establishing some common API patterns we can share and re-use across higher educational institutions.
Look for any stories out of BYU, here on API Evangelist, or over at my university API research site, and if you are doing any API work at your school, I'd love to know more about it.
