The Ultimate Secret Of APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE, APIs.

Application Programming Interface APIs

Welcome back to my blog. Today I'll be discussing APIs. APIs stands for Application Programming Interface. APIs are the most trending topic in the industry. This tutorial will cover various aspects of the Application Programming Interface. So, let's start with the tutorial.

What is an API?

In the Layman term, API is the abbreviation used for  Application Programming Interface. APIs are the set of protocols, micro-services, web services that enable two applications to communicate and exchange data with each other. 

You would be amazed to know that every day a million users across the globe make APIs call to get their job done. Every-time you use mobile apps like Twitter, Facebook you're actually calling an API in the background. 

Application Programming Interface APIs

Categories of Application Programming Interface [API].

APIs selection is a critical task. Good API would definitely make a difference to the business growth. But to understand a good API you need to understand the uniqueness of the business.  Application Programming Interface (APIs) can be categories into two categories i.e.

• Interaction APIs
• System APIs

Why are APIs so popular these days?

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are the building block of the cloud, mobile platforms and the Internet of Things revolution. There is tremendous growth in openly available APIs. As per ProgrammableWeb statistics, there are over 17,000 public APIs in production. There is two import factor behind API popularity: 

• The ease of access and portability of data exchanged through APIs are the key reasons of popularity. The default data exchange format in an API is JSON (JavaScript Serial Object Notation).
• Mobile application deeply depends on APIs to get data to and from the device to back-end systems. Thus the number of applications (apps) in the app stores grew, the number of APIs needed to support those apps also grew.

What do you think? Are APIs Considered Products or a Service?

The application programming interface is like any other product or software. But the IT professional has a different opinion. Some think APIs are a term while others think APIs as a product. The term API is smarty crafted term so that it should have wide acceptability among developer and big clients.

A modern API represents a package of capabilities that's attractive to an audience independent of any specific piece of software running in your back end.

What Is the API Economy?

Giant IT companies turn application programming interface (API) into a money-making machine. API economy emerges when APIs become part of the business model. Public and partner APIs have been strategic enablers for several online business models.

For example, companies like Google, Microsoft, IBM, Twitter, Facebook provide a number of APIs that can be utilized by any user at a nominal cost. WordsAPI-API is one of the most popular APIs that let you fetch information about an English word.

Top 5 trending publicly available APIs.

1. Facebook API.
2. Google API.
3. Twitter API
4. Youtube API
5. Microsoft API    

Is it possible to use APIs in Legacy Mainframe Application?  

Yes, the big enterprise that deeply relies on mainframe applications can expose their legacy application with the help of APIs. IBM has done an excellent modernizing z/OS and I must mainframe is still giving a tough fight to new technology.

IBM API Connect is a perfect example of mainframe modernization. It offers the base for building, safeguarding, supervise, communicate, and consuming APIs to support digital applications.

What is the REST APIs?