Open APIs
– what and why?
Adam Arndt
Danish National IT and Telecom Agency
[email protected]
+45 7231 9172
API according to Wikipedia:
a particular set of
rules and specifications that a software program can follow
to access and make use of the services and resources
provided by another particular software program that
implements that API. It serves as an interface between different
An application programming interface (API) is
software programs and facilitates their interaction, similar to the way the
user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers.
An API can be created for applications, libraries, operating systems, etc., as
a way of defining their "vocabularies" and resources request conventions
(e.g. function-calling conventions). It may include specifications for
routines, data structures, object classes, and protocols used to
communicate between the consumer program and the implementer
program of the API.
Implementations

Often WS
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Can be even more simple
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REST
SOAP
RSS
ATOM
Or proprietary format
Open API (according to Adam):

An API that partly conforms to the criteria
for open specifications:
 Fully documented
 Publicly available
 Free to use (both
and
)
 Maintained in an open forum
Danish efforts

Get to grips with the concepts
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Consider minimal requirements

Mandatory?
Key questions

Can and should we specify minimal functionality
of Open APIs?

Should Open APIs be mandatory?
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Where are Open APIs particularly important
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Cloud solutions
Case and Document handling
GIS systems
Health or other sectors