User:Tancre/Prototyping/API

API

Application Programming Interface

What is an API?

Sooo an API is basically an application that works on a meta-level and permits the exchange of informations between two software services through the use of protocols.

It is really interesting the idea of API's ecosystem

Types of API's

Methods of access

• Software libraries & Frameworks
• OS (POSIX)
• Remote
• Message-Oriented Middlewere (MOM)
• Web

Styles of Organizzations

• Procedural
• Object-oriented
• Service-oriented
• Resources-oriented

History of API's

'60

As libraries, but problems of distribution for the lack of a dystributed system.

'70-'80

Emergence of a distributed system and possibility of exchange by remote through the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) systems, that uses the Interface Definition Languages (IDL), or alternatively on techniques based on Message Oriented Middleware, such as IBM MQSeries, through the use of "queues".

late '80- early '90

Emergence of the commercial WWW and evolution of the distributed system in advanced client-server topologies (1990's "fallacies of distributed computing") Emergence of the Object-oriented programming (OOP), API's as objects, and possibilities of remote access to objects as Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) for open systems and DCOM from Microsoft, through the use of IDL.

late '90

Translations of RPC (through the use of XML) and remote object techniques into the WWW vs ubiquity of HTTP. Emergence of different architectural styles such as Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) through the use of Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and SOAP to define the protocols. Emergence of different frameworks.

2000

Roy Fielding - Representative State Transfer (REST) in his "2000 dissertation", and the emergence of the paradigm of the Resource-oriented architecture + Tim Berners-Lee - Semantic Web
leads to the emrgence of the actual Web API approach.

Sources

wikipedia / limswiki
Alan Frye - What is an API? / Types of API? / A bit of API history?
Programmableweb.com - repository and tracking published APIs since 2005