Many manufacturers are turning to application programming interfaces (APIs) to help integrate and improve their digital workflow for increasingly-common hybrid and multi-cloud environments. If your organization is about to launch a new API project, there are several issues to consider:

• Are you investing more in code than necessary? When designed and managed effectively, API projects require little to no coding. This is one of the most attractive characteristics of APIs for IT managers. They understand proprietary coding creates costs, delays and opportunities for bugs to create a system failure. APIs that require heavy coding often have incomplete architecture design or ineffective strategic planning rather than solutions for unique needs.

• Don’t forget the network. Today’s networks have significantly increased capacity compared to the days when traffic was measured in Kbps. While this is an improvement, poorly-structured API implementation can still cause problems. This is especially true when dealing with bottlenecks at network intersections. Effective plans for your caches will help eliminate this pain point, especially when applications are frequently sending requests for the same data.

• Plan for the security implications of your API architecture. For instance, we said that implementing caching is a great tool to limit resource demands from client applications. However, there needs to be additional consideration for certain security measures. With caching, you might be opening security holes for an HTTPS environment, creating bigger issues. Other security issues are unavoidable during interactions between applications online, making security a fundamental component of your strategy and design process.

• Optimize for the data you’ll be handling. When it comes to API interactions and how they’re handled, there’s a substantive difference between the best way to handle certain requests. For instance, a simple database value query and a request for a CAD file are significantly different. Make sure that big requests don’t make everything around them grind to a halt and determine how your architecture will deal effectively with both synchronous and asynchronous requests along these lines.

• Do you need to consider hypermedia APIs? Hypermedia APIs rely on a model that emphasizes flexibility and dynamic interaction between applications. They do this by allowing clients to follow hyperlinked paths to information rather than simply delivering a requested resource. If your applications are built largely in the “RESTful” web services style, hypermedia APIs may provide significant benefits as they are consistent with REST’s HATEOAS (Hypermedia As The Engine Of Application State) architecture principles.

APIs help reduce coding requirements and make applications run smoother. However, there are certain best practices that should be followed to make sure a new API project is implemented effectively.

If you’d like to learn more about the best practices we bring to data integration initiatives and how we could help your API project go as quickly and seamlessly as possible, contact us.