InfoQ: APIs Can Be a Pain

InfoQ: APIs Can Be a Pain: Boris Lublinsky
APIs are a Pain: SUBBU ALLAMARAJU
The Object Network

About Allamaraju

http://www.flickr.com/photos/subbu_allamaraju/3583889734/

Subbu Allamaraju | LinkedIn

I work with code, networking and Web protocols, REST and HTTP. Based on the work I did at Yahoo!, I wrote "RESTful Web Services Cookbook", published by O'Reilly in 2010.

RESTful Web Services Cookbook - O'Reilly Media

Points by Allamaraju

Writing HTTP client code to talk to APIs is verbose, repetitive, chatty and slow. This is in addition to addressing latency and bandwidth constraints and core functionality of the client app – such as building a snappy UI or supporting some other business use case.

• First - the interface mismatch
• Second - writing client code is slow, repetitive and verbose
• Third - Getting enhancements you need from producer teams slows you down
• Fourth - request for use cases like this are chatty
• Fifth - consistent RESTful APIs don't matter as much as we think

Solution by Allamaraju

• Bring down number of lines of code to call APIs
• Automatically orchestrate API call as needed
• Create new consumer-centric APIs that wrap existing producer-centric APIs
• Cut down bandwidth usage and latency

Best of all, this platform will soon be on github.