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The Api Paradox
by forwardslash

    Api’s are great, they allow companies to expose parts of their engine for inclusion into the products of others to increase adoption and to facilitate the development of features and products around a common set of data.

    In theory Api’s are a win-win, both for the party that exposes the Api as well as for the party that uses it and since the mid 90’s Apis have become more and more common.

    Api is short for ‘application program interface’. An Api defines a fairly rigid (as in, not changing on a daily basis) boundary where two pieces of software (typically, on the web a service and some client software) meet and where data is exchanged based on certain criteria.

    In practice though, Apis are a double edged sword, both for the exposer as well as for the user. In this article I’ll try to outline what the shadowside is of exposing an Api, and why this is a potential problem for any users of that Api.