Software Architecture and Project Design Zurich

Topic: Solving Sprawling API Syndrome: A Novel Approach to API Design

In short: You cannot build a modern distributed system these days without at least one Web API. Of course, as your system matures you just don’t have one Web API, you end up with many. Your Web APIs are literally the gateway to your system’s capabilities. Web APIs define what applications can do, the data they need to do it, and the results of the doing. Your Web APIs establish the first impression of your system with developers that quickly becomes a lasting judgement.

With your Web APIs playing such a vital role in your system’s overall success, it’s unfortunate that Web API design is almost always an afterthought. Teams focus so much energy on coding the front- end and the back-end that in the rush to get the features out they barely have time to throw a bunch of endpoints in a random controller and push it to production. Once pushed, they’ve now cemented their Web API in place for all eternity. Warts and all. Every release repeats the same cycle until every Web API becomes a sprawling mess of unmanageable (and unintelligible) endpoints.

Michael ‘Monty’ Montgomery knows this story well. Over the past 20+ years as a distributed system architect, Monty has worked with dozens of teams and has analyzed countless Web APIs. In the wild Monty rarely, if ever, finds a Web API that doesn’t suffer from sprawl. Micro-frontends, misguided use of the BFF Pattern, inappropriate REST usage, mixing REST and RPC in the same controller, poor controller cohesion, ambiguous naming, redundant endpoints, chatty interactions, and hyper-granular operations are common. And then there’s the dreaded GetBy...() anti-pattern! As teams attempt to add microservices to the mix, they apply the same approaches to their microservice APIs dramatically compounding API sprawl.

Monty has observed time and again that the resulting coupling between a team’s Web APIs, front- end applications, and microservices becomes so limiting, business agility suffers significantly. Repeated bugs, poor performance, ever-increasing development cycles, and unhappy partners ultimately erode team credibility and morale.

To combat Sprawling API Syndrome, Monty has developed a set of straightforward techniques, tips, and tricks for Web API design that promote decoupling between front-ends and back-ends. Monty has successfully applied these techniques with many teams across varied system types. Evidence of similar approaches is now even showing up in the Web APIs of well-known systems. In this highly interactive session,

Monty will share with you his novel approach to Web API design. Techniques that will help you first recognize the essential importance of properly designing your Web APIs and then help ensure you get it right!