Helping Define Stream(Line)Data.io As More Than Just Real Time Streaming

One aspect of my partnership with Streamdata.io is about helping define what it is that Streamdata.io does–internally, and externally. When I use any API technology I always immerse myself in what it does, and understand every detail regarding the value it delivers, and I work to tell stories about this. This process helps me refine not just how I talk about the products and services, but also helps influence the road map for what the products and services deliver. As I get intimate with what Streamdata.io delivers, I’m beginning to push forward how I talk about the company.

The first thoughts you have when you hear the name Streamdata.io, and learn about how you can proxy any existing JSON API, and begin delivering responses via Server-Sent Events (SSE) and JSON Patch, are all about streaming and real time. While streaming of data from existing APIs is the dominant feature of the service, I’m increasingly finding that the conversations I’m having with clients, and would be clients are more about efficiencies, caching, and streamlining how companies are delivering data. Many API providers I talk to tell me they don’t need real time streaming, but at the same time they have rate limits in place to keep their consumers from polling their APIs too much, increasing friction in API consumption, and not at all about streamlining it.

These experiences are forcing me to shift how I open up conversations with API providers. Making real time and streaming secondary to streamlining how API providers are delivering data to their consumers. Real time streaming using Server-Sent Events (SSE) isn’t always about delivering financial and other data in real time. It is about delivering data using APIs efficiently, making sure only what what has been updated and needed is delivered when it is needed. The right time. This is why you’ll see me increasingly adding (line) to the Stream(line)data.io name, helping focus on the fact that we are helping streamline how companies, organizations, institutions, and government agencies are putting data to work–not just streaming data in real time.

I really enjoy this aspect of getting to know what a specific type of API technology delivers, combined with the storytelling that I engage in. I was feeling intimidated about talking about streaming APIs with providers who clearly didn’t need it. I’m not that kind of technologist. I just can’t do that. I have to be genuine in what I do, or I just can’t do it. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that conversations were quickly becoming about making things more efficient, over actually ever getting to the streaming real time portion of things. It makes what I do much easier, and something I can continue on a day to day basis, across many different industries.