What exactly is an API? 3 analogies from the life that help to understand what is invisible
API — only 3 letters and sometimes there are no right words for them…
API is now one of the hot topics of business, indicated as the tech trend # 1 of the future. Since 2000, when the first API was born in the world, millions of companies have started using this easily scalable solution.
Access to key information here and now, process automation and the resulting saving of human and time resources, data integration in various departments of companies, acceleration of customer service, resulting in increased customer satisfaction, the possibility of developing your own API-based products - these are just some of the reasons for which Application Programming Interfaces are of such high interest in various industries these days.
The implementation of API has been no longer problematic for many technology companies such as ours, Transparent Data. However, difficulties still appear when it comes to explaining to customers what an API really is.
The technical language, so perfectly concise and precise for programmers, is - let's be honest without fear of lynching - not the language of most of our clients.
Of course, today everyone on this planet knows plus or minus what programming and downloading data from various sources consist of, but with an API is a little bit like with an electricity - for a person with a humanistic mind, it is hard to imagine that this ordered movement of electric charges makes the bulb shines and the computer works and "that someone invented it that way";)
In this article, we suggest how the API can be told in simple terms so that the client can actually “see” it.
We use for this 3 visual analogies, the aim of which is to launch in the most humanistic minds, appropriate thought processes, allowing to understand what the API is:
- comparison of an API to the phone call,
- comparison of an API to the pipe,
- comparison of an API to the river.
So, what exactly is a mysterious API?
Analogy 1: comparison of an API to the phone call
In the many dictionaries, we read that the Application Programming Interface (API) is a set of rules and descriptions in which computer programs can communicate with each other, that is, share data.
A bit like during a phone conversation. On one side is a man asking a question. On the other, we have technology that instantly gives the answer. The signal runs through the cable so that each of the interlocutors can hear the voice in their earpiece.
Analogy 2: comparison of an API to the pipe
In a sense, we can say that API is a technologically programmed tube through which data bits flow bi-directionally.
Like every pipe, the API has two ends — one on the company’s side, which sends specific queries through the API, and the other one on the data provider’s side, which gives answers to those queries. Whatever we throw into the pipe, it will appear on the other side.
Analogy 3: comparison of an API to the river
Thanks to the constant flow of fresh, current (real-time) information, API is like a river. Data flows to your systems, being constantly updated.
In opposition to traditional manual information databases, resembling standing lakes, the API eliminates situations in which the information on the basis of which you make decisions are outdated and invalid.
API and real-time data — how to explain this?
Although real-time data and API are terms that are closely related to each other, this is not always so obvious to people outside of IT.
Again, let’s use comparisons well known to our clients from everyday life.
We can start, for example, in this way:
We can boldly say that real-time is something that responds to our everyday needs. You want something here and now - you get it through the API. You say you have. No waiting, no manual (human) effort, no need to involve additional human or monetary resources. The “real-time” expression means nothing but "here and now without a delay".
In a more technical language, real-time is often explained as such a level of computer responsiveness that the user asking any question / doing any action immediately receives the most possible, current answer. The answer, which is not generated from any fixed information database that a given person updates from time to time, but the answer that the system automatically generates based on information contained in the original source.
The mechanism itself is known to all of us perfectly, even if we do not realize it. Real-time are, after all, ATMs and Twitter or Facebook user feeds!
How to finish the API talk with a client?
Give an example of how the situation would have been without the API!
We, as a company from the RegTech field, use our own example, which we commonly call "Speed matters":
Real-time data means that finding a company by its identification number lasts less than 0.001 seconds and searching through 12 million database to find a company by name (including typos, errors and eliminating 50 companies from almost the same name) takes less than 4 seconds.
And then we ask questions:
- How many people are needed to do it manually, in a traditional way?
- How long would it take them?
- And if these people were able to verify 50,000 TAX statuses of companies for a "yesterday", would they manage this task?
In this way, we emphasize the importance of speed, the importance of automation, the real value of real-time technology and API.
You might be also interested in our API Guidebook in pdf:
