The concept of API service composition has been around for some time, but is one that hasn’t remained part of the dominant API narrative. API service composition is a concept that aligns well with Representational State Transfer, or more commonly called, REST. Service composition was introduced by API management providers who were delivering solutions for API producers to define, control, and monetize access to their HTTP APIs. Service composition refers to the organization and access of HTTP APIs using the following concepts.
- API Resources - Individual API paths plus HTTP method representing a single API resource or capability.
- API Consumers - A trusted Individual or company consumers of an API for whom service is being composed.
- API Applications - A specific desktop, web, mobile, device, or AI application owned by the API consumer.
- API Plans - A custom or standardized plan including rate limits, pricing, and other business details of service.
Service compositions allows you to combine one or many API resources with an associated API plan that controls how much of a resource can be accessed by a group of, or individual API consumer and API application. With API service composition, API producers can take many individual resources and make them available to many different consumers, with different levels of pricing and other controls. When combined with authentication, API service composition provides a powerful way to control access to digital resources.
