apidays LIVE Paris 2021 - APIs and the Future of Software December 7, 8 & 9, 2021 5 Learnings Shaping Our View on the Future of APIs Frank Kilcommins, API Technical Evangelist at SmartBear

1. 5 Learnings Shaping Our View on the
Future of APIs
@fkilcommins
Frank Kilcommins
API Technical Evangelist, SmartBear

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Agenda
| Overview of our “State of Software Quality | API” report for 2021
| Key Learnings
| API Adoption Increasing
| Complex landscape
| Standardization a challenge
| Quality > Quantity
| Everyone wants ‘ease of use’
| Using learnings to power the future of API tooling….meet “Swagger ApiDOM”

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Which best describes your role in software development?
The State of Software Quality | API
Top three roles represented:
 Developers 40%
 Architects 14.5%
 QA Engineers 11%
Demographics

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How many people does your company currently employ?
Insights from a broad range of global business
engaged in designing, testing, delivering APIs
17 different industries represented
Insights across a range of organizational sizes;
showcasing how interest in APIs spans businesses of
all sizes and industries

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6. | Key Learnings

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How long has your organization been providing/developing APIs?
API adoption and development is becoming more established, with 51% of respondents
starting to create APIs in the last year
 22% have spent more than 10 years developing APIs (highest percentage recorded)
#1 – API Adoption & development increasing

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#2 – Complex Landscape
Does your organization use any of the following API protocols?
Majority of API practitioners operate in a multi-protocol
landscape even though REST dominates
 ~81% of respondents cited that they use more than
one protocol type
 ~57% stated they use 3 or more
 SOAP still hanging around
Does your organization use any of the following to model and document services?
Customer preferences for OpenAPI continues to
be high but there’s growth in other standards
 AsyncAPI + API Blueprint both doubled

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Which API technology challenges do you most hope to see solved in the near future?
API Standardization continues to be the top challenge that organizations want to solve
 True across industries and organization size
 Security has crept up to the #2 spot
#3 – Standardization is the top challenge

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#4 – Quality > Quantity
How important do you think API quality is to your organization?
75% of respondents say that API quality is Very or Extremely Important to the organization
 Ease of Use / Documentation / Performance key areas of focus

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What are your biggest obstacles to ensuring API quality in your organization?
The friction between release
speed & time availability is the
biggest obstacle to ensuring API
quality
 Organizations are trying to do
more in a constrained
environment
 Same pattern of obstacles
emerge regardless of
organization size
#4 – Quality > Quantity

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What would you consider to be the greatest potential risks of poor-quality APIs to your organization?
The top risk or poor-quality APIs continues to be the time and resources spent troubleshooting issues
 Rushed development & testing produce poor quality APIs
#4 – Quality > Quantity

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Which of the following factors are most important to you when evaluating API tools?
 Developers looking for simplicity in a complex world
 Brand Trust & Market Leadership not driving forces
#5– Ease of Use and Interoperability

14. | Leveraging the Data for Better API Tooling
Complex Multi-
protocol
Environment
Easy to Use Tools
that promote
Quality
Developer
Responsibilities
Increasing
Drive Development
Efficiencies

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Specifications at our Core
| Specification adoption slow across industry
| Addressing our own problem space
| Expanding support to multiple versions of
OpenAPI
| Expand to support editing/mgmt. of other
specs
| Managing legacy / technical debt
| Drive our OSS and Commercial experiences
| Meeting teams where they are
Wider Industry challenge
Source: https://www.postman.com/state-of-api/api-technologies/#api-technologies

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Open-Source commitment for wider industry
| Semantically rich cross format/specification
representation
| Generic for many formats: JSON, YAML, XML
| Built to support multiple specifications:
JSONSchema, OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, Protobuf, Avro
| Driving Swagger and then SmartBear tooling
| Shared openly for benefit of wider tooling
ecosystem and to evolve collectively
DOM
Source Map
Namespace
Pluggable
Architecture

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Language Service based on ApiDOM
| Multi-spec / multi-format single service offering language related features
| Consistently offer language capabilities to a variety of IDEs/editors/environments
| Browser and/or separate process (JSON-RPC for LSP)
| Powering Swagger Editor, UI, SwaggerHub and external tools (VS Code, Intellij)
No LSP LSP ApiDOM + LSP

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Stay tuned….
GitHub Repo:
https://github.com/swagger-api/apidom

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Thank You
Any Questions?
frank.kilcommins@smartbear.com
@fkilcommins

20. New York
JULY
Australia
SEPTEMBER
Singapore
APRIL
Helsinki & North
MARCH
Paris
DECEMBER
London
OCTOBER
Jakarta
FEBRUARY
Hong Kong
AUGUST
JUNE
India
MAY
Check out our API Conferences here
50+ events since 2012, 14 countries, 2,000+ speakers, 50,000+ attendees,
300k+ online community
Want to talk at one of our conferences?
Apply to speak here