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 >> It would be nice to explore in a graphical way the system of relations between different software services and API's that permits those relations.

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".

Sources

wikipedia IT & ENG
Alan Frye - What is an API? /Types of API? /A bit of API history?

User:Tancre/Prototyping/API

Contents

API