Digital Transformation

CHAPTER 16APIs

This chapter provides an overview of the APIs that act as building blocks to allow enterprises to leverage the data and services in the digital ecosystem. It also discusses the architecture, business strategy, roadmap, and API development life cycle to help the enterprise integrate and become intelligent.

API Overview

An application programming interface (API) is a set of rules, procedures, and tools that allow applications to communicate and interact with each other. The convergence of mobile, data, cloud, and social media in today's economy has driven the universal need for APIs acting as new business channels and playing a major role in the integration of IT systems and architectures across industries. The explosive growth of mobile devices shifted the use from browser‐based to device‐based using apps and communicating through APIs.

In simple terms, an API is a messenger that takes requests from a mobile device app, as an example, and communicates with the back‐end system for any particular action that needs to be performed and, then returns the response to the mobile app. Let's take a simple example. While booking a flight on any airline's website, a traveler fills out the requisite information, then the data is retrieved from the airline's database and provided to the portal. Similarly, when a traveler fills out the same information on an online booking site, the site fetches the information by interacting with each airline's API and the information ...