A history of integration and ultimately APIs, as well as a current state of the space and a future look at where we're headed. As presented by Jason Harmon at Booz Allen Hamilton's "Distinguished Speaker Series" 3/1/2015

1. PAST, PRESENT AND
FUTURE
OF APIS
Jason Harmon
@jharmn

2. JASON
HARMON
• From Austin, TX
• Head of API Design at Paypal
• Blogger at apiux.com,
pragmaticapi.com
• Organizer austinapi.com
meetup
• Youtube: API Workshop
• https://www.youtube.com/ch
annel/UCKK2ir0jqCvfB-
kzBGka_Lg

3. AGENDA
• What is an API?
• History of integration
• How APIs changed the
landscape
• The future of M2M +
humans
• Important people along
the way

4. WHAT IS AN API
• “Application Programming Interface”
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programm
ing_interface
• Programming languages
• Libraries, frameworks
• Web APIs

5. PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGESLandmark case between Oracle and Google
http://www.programmableweb.com/news/supreme-court-reviews-oracle-v.-
google-copyright-case/elsewhere-web/2015/01/25

6. LIBRARIES AND
FRAMEWORKSLegal ramifications in language/framework APIs
will affect how we handle Web APIs

8. WHAT IS AN API
“Web APIs”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_API
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_s
tate_transfer

9. THAT’s what I’m talking about

10. HISTORY OF APIS
It’s all about integration
These problems are not new

11. WESTERN UNION
TELEGRAPH1850s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Tel
egraph

12. TELETYPE
Teletype data of 300 baud modem used in1948 Berlin Airlift
Over 200,000 flights in one year, providing up to 8,893 tons of necessities daily, such as
fuel and food
Led to formation of Transportation Data Coordinating Committee in 1968

13. EDI
First standard published in 1968

14. EDI
First implementation, London Heathrow 1971

15. EDI
1978 ANSI formed Accredited Standard Committee
1983, ANSI published the first five American National Standards
for EDI

16. EDI
1987 EDIFACT becomes international standard
United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce
and Transport (UN/EDIFACT)

17. EDI
Industry specific standards proliferate
Largely complete by 1996

18. NOT FUN TO
LOOK AT
Nobody thought about
humans.

19. STANDARDS
Government to government
Company to company
~30 years

21. THOSE WHO
CANNOT
REMEMBER THE
PAST ARE
CONDEMNED TO
REPEAT IT
George Santayana -1905

22. RESPECT HISTORY
• Standardization was slow, nearly impossible
• Global data exchange was explored
throughout the 20th century
• Developers broadly weren’t able to contribute
to these standards

23. INTERNET
Maybe the Internet will fix this?

24. DATA IS NOT
ENOUGH
Remote procedure calls
Distributed computing
Language Interop

25. XML-RPC
• Dave Winer 1998
• Began collaboration with
Microsoft
• Developed within
COM/MTS team
• XML wasn’t even really a
standard yet

26. SOAP
Took into account:
• Existing serialization formats
(ASN.1 BER, NDR, XDR, CDR,
JRMP)
• RPC protocols (GIOP/IIOP,
DCE/DCOM, RMI, ONC)
1998-1999 Version 1.0 Microsoft-
only
2000 Version 1.1 IBM modifications
2002 Version 1.2 became a W3C
recommendation on June 24, 2003

27. SOAP
Proliferation of standards
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_service_specifications

28. SOAP
Not fun to look at either.

29. SOAP STANDARDS
Massive effort across multiple industries
D
5 years
+5 years of non-stop expansion

30. ROY
FIELDING
Part of SOAP standardization
Key contributor to HTTP 1.1, URI
Co-founder of Apache HTTP
Server
Wrote a dissertation in 2000,
while defining HTTP 1.1
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/p
ubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.
htm

34. REST CONSTRAINTS
“Representational State Transfer (REST)”
• Client-Server
• Stateless
• Cache
• Interface / Uniform Contract
• Layered System
• Code-On-Demand (opt)

35. REST IS AN
EXPRESSIO
N OF HTTP
The World Wide Web
represents the largest
implementation of a system
conforming to the REST
architectural style

36. NOT SO BAD
TO LOOK AT
Stripped down compared
to prior standards

37. REST STANDARDS >
NULLREST is an architectural style, not a standard
D
5 years to practical examples
+5 years of evolution
HTTP REST API

38. STANDARDS
Restrictive standards stifle
innovation
Broad constraints are why
the web has been
successful
De facto best practices
have risen from successful
APIs

39. A LITTLE MORE RECENT
HISTORY

40. BEFORE YOU LEARN MUCH
MORE
Curators of API history
• apievangelist.com
• programmableweb.com

41. WEB SERVICES
SOA, SOAP, XML over HTTP took off
http://apievangelist.com/2012/01/12/the-secret-to-amazons-success-
internal-apis/
~2002

42. COMMERCE

43. SOCIAL

44. CLOUD/INFRASTRUCTU
RE

45. MOBILE

46. GOVERNMENT
Open Data Initiative -
http://www.whitehouse.gov/open
Long-time publisher of public data

47. REST OUTSIDE | SOAP
INSIDEPublic APIs in REST
Internal/Partner APIs in SOAP
https://jegatech.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/soap-vs-rest/

48. THE LANDSCAPE TODAY

49. REST WON
Now 13k

50. GROWTH OF APIS
Now 13k

51. GROWTH OF APIS
From 2014

52. PUBLIC APIS ARE
A STRATEGIC NECESSITY
http://www.forbes.com/site
s/mckinsey/2014/01/07/rea
dy-for-apis-three-steps-to-
unlock-the-data-economys-
most-promising-channel/

53. PUBLIC IS
NOT
ALWAYS
RIGHT
Public programs closing
• Netflix
• LinkedIn
Still heavily using APIs
Not strategically valuable
publicly

54. MAINSTREA
M
• APIs are becoming
powerful
• API management
consolidation in
2013/2014
• Twilio (API-only startup)
IPO coming
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2015/02/20/twilio-positions-itself-for-an-ipo-after-logging-100m-in-2014-revenue/

55. ALL MOBILE
APPS USE
APIS
Not all publicly
documented
Frequently reverse
engineered

56. PRIVATE APIS ARE THE DARK
MATTER
Internal APIs are a much, much bigger landscape
http://apiux.com/2014/02/06/dark-matter-api-
universe/

57. MICROSERVICES
REST APIs inside and outside
http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html

58. API ADOPTION
Machine to Machine = API
http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2819918

59. WILL HISTORY REPEAT
ITSELF?
REST APIs offer nothing to
save us from past
complexities of integration
Microservices could be
SOA with a new brand

60. DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE
UX transformed the app
world
DX is an emerging field
• AKA DX, APIUX, APX
Designing developer
interfaces for humans and
machines
http://uxmag.com/articles/effective-developer-experience

61. DESIGN THINKING
Interfaces humans can understand
Documentation that explains things for developers
Less reference, more guides

62. THE FUTURE
OF APIS
What’s next?

63. TRANSPAREN
CY
Governments
Companies
Personal

64. SHARING
CAPABILITIESCompanies are almost exclusively building on top of
APIs
Stick to core competencies

65. OPEN GOVERNMENT
Citizens demand it
Governments need it to scale

66. IOT
“Internet of Things”

67. QUANTIFIED
SELF
Sensor data about yourself

68. IOT ADOPTION
The things are coming
http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2819918

69. CONNECTED…EVERYTHI
NGAppliances, sports equipment, shoes…whatever.

70. CONNECTED CARS
By 2020 152 million cars will have connectivity
http://business.time.com/2014/01/07/your-car-is-about-to-get-smarter-than-
you-are/

71. SMART CITIES
Songdo, South Korea is a cutting edge
experiment

72. IOT: BECAUSE BIG
DATAUnimaginable volumes of sensor data are
coming

73. APIS ALL
THE WAY
DOWN
Connected devices will use
APIs at the edge and the
backend

74. PROTOCOLS
• Industrial and consumer
needs
• Pub/Sub will be critical
• Streaming sensor data
• HTTP might not be good
enough
HTTP/2
CoAP
MQTT

75. EDGE CONNECTIVITY
• TCP protocols often not
useful in the field
• Location-awareness
• Wifi/cell
insecure/unreliable
• Bluetooth LE
• NFC

76. SECURE THE THINGS

77. INFORMATION
WANTS TO BE
FREE …
“I believe that all generally useful
information should be free. By 'free'
I am not referring to price, but
rather to the freedom to copy the
information and to adapt it to one's
own uses... When information is
generally useful, redistributing it
makes humanity wealthier no
matter who is distributing and no
matter who is receiving”
Richard Stallman -1990
http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/IWtbF.html

78. LOFTY GOALS,
BIG RESPONSIBILITY.

79. A GENERATION
OR TWO LATER…

81. DATA BREACHES
“Information wants to be free”

82. IF YOU WANT IT SECRET
YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE
TO WORK REALLY HARD
FOR IT.

83. SECURITY
• The best HTTP has is
HTTPS
• Constant threats to
transmission-level security
are nerve wracking
• Government intercept and
decrypt capabilities have
left the private sector
shaken
http://dayswithoutansslexploit.com

84. AUTH
OAuth 2 and SAML are broadly accepted

85. MAKING UP AUTH
Not following accepted practices is perilous
“The Snappening”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/14/us-snapchat-future-security-
idUSKCN0I32UJ20141014

86. RELAX.
There are people thinking about these things.