Blog

API Trends I Am Watching

by Kin Lane on 03/01/2013

Photo Credit: AVnet I try to keep API Evangelist a place where API newbies and API experts can both find what they are looking for. To meet this demand I’m constantly moving the site around, trying to uncover more information, in a logical way that speaks to everyone. To change things up a little I moved a couple of the most important trends in APIs out of the trends section, and put them on the right hand menu, making them accessible from any page. There are four trends I think are important to how APIs are being used right now: Aggregation - Merging various APIs together into not just meaningful new stacks of resources, but entirely new resources, as a result of merging BaaS - The promise of Backend as a Service is to bundle together resources developers need to build mobile apps more efficiently. Some providers are rolling their own stacks, while others are using a hybrid approach with wise use of 3rd party API resources Reciprocity - The integration, interoperability, automation and transformation of data between cloud services, in a way that respects the relationshiop between user and platform, that uses APIs.... read more.

Tags: Aggregation, BaaS, Data Analysis, Data Visualization, Realtime, Reciprocity, syndication, Voice

MySQL, PostgreSQL and RDS to API With Emergent One

by Kin Lane on 03/01/2013

There are numerous companies, with existing IT infrastructure, who are looking to deploy APIs in 2013. These companies will be deploying APIs using their existing technology teams, or depending on one of the 17 API management service providers available. This market is ripe for the 3Scale's of the world to provide valuable services to, but for many companies, organizations and government agencies who need to deploy APIs this year, API deployment will be about taking an existing database or multiple databases, and open them up to the public, partners, 3rd party developers or possibly just provide access to a remote department or branch of their company in the easiest way possible. Not all companies will have the resources, or the need to deploy full blown API programs. They just need a dead simple database to API solution that will quickly expose their data over the web in a secure way. Until recently this solution wasn’t available in the cloud, but a new API service provider called Emergent One has stepped up to fill in the gap. Emergent One is a cloud service that allows you to connect to your company's MySQL, PostgreSQL or Amazon RDS databases, then generate a REST API from your existing data stores.... read more.

Tags: Amazon RDS to API, Database to API, Emergent One, MySQL to API, PostgreSQL to API

API Deployment as a Service

by Kin Lane on 03/01/2013

APIs are all the rage, anyone should be able launch an API from CSV, Microsoft Excel, Google Spreadsheet or the common databases such as MySQL, PostGres, Amazon RDS, Microsoft SQL Server. Right? I’ve been watching API service providers evolve for the last three years, helping companies be successful in managing their APIs. But when you actually going through the list of service providers, looking for someone to help you deploy an API, there are very few options out of the box. The list of API Players coming from the enterprise: These enterprise players assume you will have existing infrastructure to publish web services, files and other message systems that they can connect with, to deploy your new APIs that you will manage. The most recent generation of API service providers: Are pretty much the same. While they may provide how to guides for deploying APIs on AWS, like 3Scale, the deployment of API endpoint is still your responsiblity. You need to have existing infrastructure that will do it, or find the REST framework of your choice--both requiring you have the appropriate talent and resources.... read more.

Tags: CSV to API, Database to API, Deploy API, Launch API, MySQL to API

Continue With My API Service As A Guest

by Kin Lane on 02/28/2013

Making onboarding with an API as frictionless as possible is one thing I like to study and educate my readers about. While I was studying what I call the API reciprocity space currently, which is an evolution of what is known in the enterprise as ETL, I came across a company called FoxWeave. FoxWeave is a service that can migrate and synchronize data across all your cloud and on-premise apps and databases. When I went to “try it now” at FoxWeave, I was told “no signup needed”. But I didnt’ think much about it until I saw the temporary guest account popup. What a powerful concept. Evolving the freemium concept into the world of anonymity, allowing me to play with and understand your service before having to commit in any way. One less piece of friction when I’m trying to understad a new tool or service. Nice work FoxWeave.... read more.

Tags: Automation, FoxWeave, Interoperability, Reciprocity

From ETL to API Reciprocity, Looking at 20 Service Providers

by Kin Lane on 02/28/2013

I spent time this week looking at 20, of what I’m calling API reciprocity providers, who are providing a new generation of what is historically known as ETL in the enterprise, to connect, transfer, transform and push data and content between the cloud services we are increasingly growing dependent on. With more and more of our lives existing in the cloud and via mobile devices, the need to migrate data and content between services will only grow more urgent. While ETL has all the necessary tools to accomplish the job, the cloud democratized IT resources, and the same will occur to ETL, making these tools accessible by the masses. There are quite a few ETL solutions, but I feel there are 3 solutions that are starting to make a migration towards an easier to understand and implement vision of ETL: These providers are more robust, and provide much of the classic ETL tools the enterprise is used to, but also have the new emphasis on API driven services.... read more.

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Merging API Automation and Interoperability Into API Reciprocity

by Kin Lane on 02/27/2013

While I’m wading through dictionaries and thesauruses in an effort to find a more appropriate term “governance”, when looking at SOA governance through the API lense--I figured I’d flush out another area I’m working to define a term that appropriately describes automation and interoperability using APIs. Yesterday I took a look at 31 backend as a service (BaaS) providers, in hopes of understanding more about what value they provide. Today I'm diving into the automation section of my new API trends area. While reviewing, I noticed the exact same companies that were under automation were also in interoperability. So I set out to find a new word to apply to this next generation of ETL providers that are building bridges between cloud platforms using APIs, as well as legacy data connections. I have settled on the word reciprocity.... read more.

Tags: Connection, Etl, Extract, Load, Reciprocity, Transform

What Is A Better Word For Governance When It Comes To APIs?

by Kin Lane on 02/27/2013

There is a great post by Lorinda Brandon (@lindybrandon) of SmartBear on ProgrammableWeb today called Governance vs Innovation: Do They Have to be Enemies? She continues a conversation, from API Strategy & Practice around the word "governance", and how in the API space, this is often considered a bad word. I was moderating the questions for Alistair Farquharson (@afarqu) CTO of SOA Software, when Irakli Nadareishvili (@inadarei) of NPR actually agreed that it is a bad word and asked if we need to evolve beyond it and not embrace it. I totally agree with Lorinda's approach to walking the line between governance and innovation, and look forward to more discussion around how to analyze API vs SOA principles within the enterprise--striking a balance that works for each individual approach. To help stimulate this conversation I wanted to break down the word, governance. In the context of IT, governance is: a concept used for activities related to exercising control over services in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The definitions of SOA governance agree in its purpose of exercising control, but differ in the responsibilities it should have.... read more.

Tags: Apistrat, Governance, smartbear, SOA

75 Features From Across 31 BaaS Providers

by Kin Lane on 02/26/2013

I’m currently tracking on 31 backend as a service providers, in an effort to better understand how this new breed of platforms are helping developers build web and mobile apps. After looking at all the BaaS providers, there are 13 clear leaders: Then there are another 18 other players, trying to play catch up in a space that is working hard to define itself in 2013: My goal is to better understand what features are offered across these 31 BaaS providers. To accomplish this, I spent no more than an hour per provider looking through their sites and playing with their products to get at least a basic understanding of their offerings. When looking for features I tried to standardize the best I could, but it is difficult when there are different approaches to the deployment of resources on each platform. I found about 75 distinct features being offered across the 31 BaaS providers. I’m sure there are other features, and vital details missing, but I wanted to start somewhere.... read more.

Tags: BaaS, BaaS, Features

BaaS Provider Quickblox Offers Unlimited API Calls and Push Notifications

by Kin Lane on 02/26/2013

Backend as a Service (BaaS) provider QuickBlox announced new pricing plans, which includes a free tier up to 10GB in traffic and storage, with unlimited API calls and push notifications. The BaaS space is heating up with lots of discussion about whether you should charge developers by active user, features, storage or API call--with each provider being pretty vocal about where they stand. Quickblox is approach similar to StackMob, who refuses to charge based upon API call, atributing it to a sucess tax. But Quickblox is somewhat different, as they still charge for hard costs like bandwidth and storage--Stackmob only charges by feature. I'm trying to understand all the approaches to BaaS pricing, which was also a panel discussion last week at API Strategy & Practice between Parse, Stackmob, Kinvey, Kii, Cloudmine and Firebase.... read more.

Tags: BaaS, QuickbBlox, StackMob

Which Of The Three OAuth Legs Is The Most Important?

by Kin Lane on 02/26/2013

We closed up the API Strategy & Practice Conference (#APIstrat) last friday with a panel called APIs, Platforms and Ecosystem, where I moderated a healthy discussion with Tyler Stalder (@tylerstalder) of Singly, Seth Blank (@AntiFreeze) of YourTrove, Asif Rahman (@asifrahman) of Newscred, Orian Marx (@orian) of App. net, Travis Wallis (@traviswallis) of PeopleBrowsr around the very broad spectrum of APIs, platforms and the concept of ecosystems. One of the questions I asked the group was, which of the three OAuth Legs is the most important? To provide a quick primer for the portion of my audience that aren’t OAuth geeks: OAuth is an open standard for authorization that provides a method for clients to access server resources on behalf of a resource owner Ok, what does that mean? Think Twitter. Twitter is server. You are the owner of your tweet resources. When you authenticate anywhere using your Twitter ID, that website or app uses OAuth to get access to your tweets, via the Twitter platform.... read more.

Tags: Apistrat, App.net, Ecosystem, NewsCred, OAuth, peoplebrowsr, Singly, YourTrove