Your Web API is Not the WWW

One of the most common techniques used by the REST faithful to shut down any questioning of the faith is to appeal to the WWW. This post attempts to establish the fallacy of such an appeal.

Posted by Howard Tuesday, June 26, 2018

A Question on Aggregate APIs and Microservices

I received the following question from one of our service teams last week and thought it was likely the type of issue that a lot of you are dealing with (or have solved) in our current world of 'microservice all the thingz!'

Posted by Howard Monday, April 2, 2018

An API by Any Other Version

Version 3 of my thoughts on API versioning. Spoiler: It's all just about names.

Posted by Howard Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Thoughts on a Next Generation API Gateway

Today's API Gateway products are geared towards addressing deficiencies in upstream services rather than adding unique value. I have some thoughts on what a next-generation, value-adding gateway might look like.

Posted by Howard Thursday, May 4, 2017

Linked Data and Mutations

Whenever talk about linked data, there are generally 2 questions that get asked: what are the practical benefits of applying linked data principles and how do you handle mutations (changes) to data? This addresses the latter.

Posted by Howard Monday, November 14, 2016

Service Ownership and Linked Data

It's hard to tease apart services. It's easier to tease apart data.

Posted by Howard Friday, November 4, 2016

A Linked Data Overview for Web API Developers

For a while now, I’ve held the belief that the biggest reason people get the whole “REST" thing wrong is because they are looking at Roy Fielding’s doctoral dissertation – the paper that coins the term “REST” - as a prescription for how to design APIs. There are 2 things wrong here that I think explain the current state of the API world when it comes to REST. First, is the idea that the terms and descriptions in the paper can be exclusively applied to the server.

Posted by Howard Saturday, October 15, 2016

Reading List: Web APIs, REST, Linked Data

In response to my recent post on Swagger and REST, I was asked the following on Twitter: Rather than a Twitter stream of references, I thought I would just consolidate my resource list here. Note that for the most part, this list is limited to books. While I’ve put a few canonical Web documents on here, it’s nearly impossible to go back through and chronicle every blog post and article that has shaped my thinking.

Posted by Howard Monday, October 10, 2016

Swagger Ain't REST - is that OK?

If you’ve spent much time with me, you’ve undoubtedly heard me ramble on at length about linked data. And in those conversations, you’ve likely heard me say something to the effect of “linked data is REST”. However, I haven’t really spent much time talking about REST by itself - especially considering the amount of importance heaped on it by proponents of the “API Economy”. I’ve focused my attentions elsewhere primarily because as an architectural style, REST isn’t something that a team can just go and implement.

Posted by Howard Friday, October 7, 2016

There is No REST API

I’ve spent some time talking with my teams recently about REST from the perspective of an API, and also how APIs built through the lens of technologies like Swagger go against some of the most important principles of REST. As I’ve reflected more over conversations, there is one even more fundamental thing that tends to get lost in the conversation. And that is that REST doesn’t describe APIs. REST describes the architectural characteristics of an entire system, which includes all of the different components of that system.

Posted by Howard Thursday, September 15, 2016

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ABOUT ME
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I’m into a bit of everything. Some might say that makes me attention-deficit - I like to think it gives me the ability to see things from more angles. I’m a huge technology enthusiast, and while I've worked for some pretty large tech companies, my interests are pretty broad. The opinions here are mine alone.