Blog Archives - Page 3 of 14 - OpenAPI Initiative

Apr 24

Announcing the API Specifications Conference (ASC) 2022 Early Bird Submission Deadline

By Open API Initiative Blog

The fourth API Specifications Conference (ASC) will take place from September 19^th through September 21^st. We’re delighted to be back in-person this year after two years of having a virtual-only event! As part of the call for proposals we’re accepting and announcing five talks early. To have your talk considered, please have your submission completed by May 6^th, 11:59 PM PDT.

The early bird submission will give you advance notice to prepare for your talk and your talk will be announced before the full schedule, giving you an opportunity to amplify your topic. Additionally, this year we are giving early birds the flexibility to choose which day they would like to speak.

Submit your talk today!

Early bird deadline: May 6^th, 11:59 PM PDT

Regular deadline: ~~May 27^th, 11:59 PM PDT~~ – New deadline – June 3^rd, 11:59 PM PDT

We will notify any speakers who have an early bird submission accepted within two weeks after the deadline. Even if your early bird submission is not accepted in this round, it will still be reviewed along with other entries after the regular deadline.

If you need help or advice for your submissions, please contact speakers@openapis.org. If you are a first-time and/or underrepresented speaker, we especially want to help you submit a talk and are available to help you work through talk ideas or how to structure your proposal.

On behalf of the organizing committee,

Frank Kilcommins, Program Chair, ASC 2022

Apr 24

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API Specifications Conference (ASC) 2022 – Call for Proposals

By Open API Initiative Blog

After a fantastic inaugural event in 2019, successful virtual events in 2020 and 2021, the API Specifications Conference (ASC) is back in-person in 2022, from September 19^th through September 21^st. Mark your calendars!

ASC 2022 will include keynotes, sessions, panel talks and open discussion on specifications and standards behind the cutting-edge technologies that chart the future of APIs. And we want to hear your talk proposals!

We are looking for talks that range from beginner-level introductions to API specifications all the way through expert recommended practices and forward-looking sessions on API specifications and standards. The OpenAPI Specification, gRPC, AsyncAPI, GraphQL, RAML, API Blueprint, ODATA, JSON Schema, and other formats, all make for great topics at this event. We want to hear your talks on how you are using specifications and standards in practice. Topics can include but are not limited to design, testing, security, lifecycle, runtime, governance, and developer experience. In-depth discussions not only enable attendees to get familiar with these specifications and standards but use them in practice.

API practitioners and enthusiasts involved across the full spectrum of API lifecycle activities will attend ASC 2022. We’re looking for API designers, API developers, API testers, API technical writers, API product managers, API security, API Operations, enterprise architects, and many more personas to actively participate. We encourage and welcome you to make submissions.

Check out last year’s talks to get an idea of the different kinds of talks we have had: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcx_iGeB-Nxi54fIfinPnGfn6lPOLnLXQ

The Call for Proposals is open:

Submit your talk at: https://sessionize.com/api-specifications-conference-2022/

Submission deadline: ~~May 27^th, 11:59 PM PDT~~ – New deadline – June 3^rd, 11:59 PM PDT

We’re looking forward to your proposals and participation that will make ASC 2022 a great event again this year!

On behalf of the organizing committee,

Frank Kilcommins, Program Chair, ASC 2022

Mar 28

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Flotiq, API-First Content Management Platform, Joins OpenAPI Initiative

By OpenAPI Initiative Blog

The OpenAPI Initiative, the consortium of forward-looking industry experts focused on evolving and implementing the OpenAPI Specification (OAS), is announcing that Flotiq has joined as a new member.

Flotiq is a content management platform that is focused on APIs. It enables users to create custom content types. It generates supporting APIs, documentation, SDKs, and Postman collections. The Content Types created in Flotiq are automatically translated into a set of RESTful endpoints. Flotiq provides an OpenAPI schema that updates automatically after every change made to data models. That schema is then used for generating SDKs and API docs. Tapping into the OpenAPI ecosystem – Flotiq takes the developer experience to the next level and facilitates system intregration and publishing content through standard-compliant APIs.

“At Flotiq we strongly believe in open standards to enable development of well-engineered systems. We support the OpenAPI Specification extensively in our product, and by joining the OpenAPI Initiative we see a real opportunity to help shape the future of OpenAPI,” said Andrew Wytyczak-Partyka, CEO, Flotiq. “Now, more than ever, it’s time for us to engage with the community. We’re excited to be a member of the OpenAPI Initiative.”

Flotiq Resources

Flotiq home page
Main Flotiq documentation
Flotiq blog
Flotiq Youtube channel
Flotiq community discord channel

OpenAPI Resources

To learn more about participate in the evolution of the OpenAPI Specification: https://www.openapis.org/participate/how-to-contribute

About the OpenAPI Initiative

The OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) was created by a consortium of forward-looking industry experts who recognize the immense value of standardizing on how APIs are described. As an open governance structure under the Linux Foundation, the OAI is focused on creating, evolving, and promoting a vendor neutral description format. The OpenAPI Specification was originally based on the Swagger Specification, donated by SmartBear Software. To get involved with the OpenAPI Initiative, please visit https://www.openapis.org

About Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open-source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation projects like Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js and more are considered critical to the development of the world’s most important infrastructure. Its development methodology leverages established best practices and addresses the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

Feb 10

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Treblle, API Monitoring and Analytics, Is OpenAPI’s Newest Member

By OpenAPI Initiative Blog

The OpenAPI Initiative, the consortium of forward-looking industry experts focused on evolving and implementing the OpenAPI Specification (OAS), is announcing today that Treblle has joined as a new member.

Treblle provides API monitoring and analytics solutions, and makes it “easy to understand what’s going on with your APIs and the apps that use them.” Treblle was established to solve problems the founders themselves, Vedran Cindrić and Darko Blaževic, had experienced.

Based in Zagreb, Croatia, Treblle announced €1.2 million in via Nauta Capital in July 2021.

“I wanted Treblle to join the OpenAPI specification because I strongly believe that we need to have some kind of standard, guide or north star when it comes to API docs,” said Vedran Cindrić, Founder, Treblle. “I’ve spent the past 10 years building products, platforms, apps and APIs. I saw some amazing APIs with superb documentation, but I also saw a lot of terrible APIs that were documented horribly. I think the OpenAPI specification is a great way of pushing documentation forward and, more importantly, pushing developers forward to not just write docs but build better APIs.”

Full Treblle API Monitoring and Analytics information available here: https://treblle.com/

More from Treblle

Free Treblle ebook for building great REST APIs: https://treblle.com/ebooks/the-10-rest-commandments

Treblle for PHP, Python, Node, Laraval and more: https://github.com/Treblle

Treblle on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/DevelopingAPIs/

OpenAPI Resources

To learn more about participate in the evolution of the OpenAPI Specification: https://www.openapis.org/participate/how-to-contribute

About the OpenAPI Initiative

The OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) was created by a consortium of forward-looking industry experts who recognize the immense value of standardizing on how APIs are described. As an open governance structure under the Linux Foundation, the OAI is focused on creating, evolving and promoting a vendor neutral description format. The OpenAPI Specification was originally based on the Swagger Specification, donated by SmartBear Software. To get involved with the OpenAPI Initiative, please visit https://www.openapis.org

About Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation projects like Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js and more are considered critical to the development of the world’s most important infrastructure. Its development methodology leverages established best practices and addresses the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

Dec 16

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This Year’s API Specification Conference (ASC 2021) by the Numbers

By OpenAPI Initiative Blog

This year’s API Specifications Conference (ASC) organized by the OpenAPI initiative was held virtually from September 28 through 29, 2021. The conference continues to grow by leaps and bounds and is gaining the attention of people interested in API technology. It was a real thrill hearing from industry experts discussing topics such as OpenAPI Specifications, RAML, Blueprint, gRPC, OData, JSON, Schema, GraphQL, AsyncAPI and other formats. For example, the keynote presentation Leading API efforts at scale by Mandy Whaley & Yina Arenas, Microsoft, So you think you understand JSON Schema? By Ben Hutton, Postman/JSON Schema. Or AsyncAPI 2.0: Enabling the Event-Driven World by Someshekhar Banerjee, Ebay.The discussions helped attendees get acquainted with the different formats and also learn how to practically use them.

The full Linux Foundation report on ASC 2021, “Transparency Report: API Specifications Conference (ASC) 2021” is available now (PDF).

2021 ASC Transparency Report_Final Download

We had attendance from 319 people from 37 countries—with a majority of them attending up to 10 sessions.

The survey conducted after the conference showed that 89% of the attendees rated the content delivered at the conference as “Great” or “Excellent.”

The charge for the entire conference was $39 and 10 community scholarships were given to active members of the open source community. OpenAPI donated $10 from each registration fee and a total of $2,500 was donated to Code2040 in support of their mission. Code2040 is growing racial equity lens in the tech industry through their Fellows Program with technology companies. The conference received a Gold badge with the highest rating from the CHAOSS D&I Event Badging Program, showing that we promote healthy D&I practices.

Online events have created an opportunity for us to reach new audiences and expand our reach. For those that missed the conference or would like to watch the event again, the keynote and session recordings are available on our YouTube Channel. Speaker presentations are also available for download under each talk here.

Download the full Linux Foundation report on ASC 2021, “Transparency Report: API Specifications Conference (ASC) 2021” (PDF).

2021 ASC Transparency Report_Final Download

Dec 09

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ReadMe, API Documentation Hub, Joins OpenAPI Initiative

By OpenAPI Initiative Blog

The OpenAPI Initiative, the consortium of forward-looking industry experts focused on evolving and implementing the OpenAPI Specification (OAS), is announcing today that ReadMe has joined as a new member.

With ReadMe, teams create interactive developer hubs that help users learn, build, and debug API issues. Access to real-time API request history can improve developer support and visibility into how APIs are being used to prioritize improvements.

Backed by Accel, ReadMe supports developer hubs for more than 10,000 API teams like Notion, Scale AI, Lyft, and Intercom.

Focus on Easier to Use APIs

“ReadMe’s mission is to make documentation and APIs better for everybody. The goal of making every API easier and more fun to use guides everything we do — from big product updates like our recent API Reference redesign or ReadMe Recipes to little details like code samples generated by the api SDK and schema-based tooltips,” said Gregory Koberger, ReadMe Founder and CEO. “The OpenAPI Specification has helped us better understand the complexity of APIs, so we can better abstract that complexity away for our customers. We’re looking forward to bringing our perspective on developer experience to the group!”

Supporting OpenAPI v3.1

Along with joining the OAI, today ReadMe is announcing full upload support for OpenAPI v3.1. After uploading an OpenAPI 3.1 file in ReadMe, users can take advantage of a growing set of OpenAPI functionality in their API Reference, including recently added support for tag and callback objects.

If you’d like to contact ReadMe directly, send email to support@readme.io or on Twitter at @readme.

OpenAPI Resources

To learn more about participate in the evolution of the OpenAPI Specification: https://www.openapis.org/participate/how-to-contribute

About the OpenAPI Initiative

The OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) was created by a consortium of forward-looking industry experts who recognize the immense value of standardizing on how APIs are described. As an open governance structure under the Linux Foundation, the OAI is focused on creating, evolving and promoting a vendor neutral description format. The OpenAPI Specification was originally based on the Swagger Specification, donated by SmartBear Software. To get involved with the OpenAPI Initiative, please visit https://www.openapis.org

About Linux Foundation

Nov 03

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Announcing Open Finance, a New OpenAPI Special Interest Group

By OpenAPI Initiative Blog

OpenAPI has formed a Special Interest Group (SIG) for the purpose of identifying the API use cases and behaviors to empower Open Finance solutions in the near future.

Open Finance is the evolution of Open Banking, a relatively new innovation in the field of financial technology. This has been largely spurred by laws and regulations centered around customer data and transactions respectively in the UK and EU in 2016 and 2018-19. Other markets the world over are also beginning to develop solutions based on Open Finance… or at least have started following the developments closely.

With all this in mind, the OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) has created an SIG to support the adoption of APIs and help grow the digital infrastructure for this next evolution of banking and finance. The initial focus will be on serving financial organizations and their customers within the EU and European Economic Area as they rapidly develop solutions to comply with Payment Services Directive 2. As solutions are developed for Europe, they will become immediately applicable to other markets.

The OAI has named Refael Botbol Weiss (LinkedIn/Github) as the POC for the group. Email him at refael@up9.com for information and inquiries about joining.

The initial steps will be to form a forum of experts in the world of development and finance to discuss the issues surrounding open finance implementation as well as the API behaviors necessary to facilitate Open Finance solutions. Additionally, the primary use cases of Open Finance technology will be discussed, which may include banks, credit unions, insurance companies, credit bureaus, real estate groups, financial planners, and/or others.

Participation in this SIG will be open to any member of the OAI. To sign up for the OAI, visit here.

For updates and more information about getting involved, click here.

Oct 25

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A Good Travel Experience Begins with One Single Booking Portal – How Open APIs Are Leading the Way

By OpenAPI Initiative Blog

For more information on the OpenAPI Initiative and #sig-travel, join the conversation on Slack. https://open-api.slack.com/archives/C0122NPKUR2

Today’s traveler is increasingly shopping for an experience, not just a seat on a plane or bed in a hotel. In fact, the travel experience begins from the booking environment itself where consumers expect a single portal to connect across travel providers and travel retailers. People are looking for the convenience and value of the delivery and ride sharing apps that they use in their day-to-day lives and want that applied to the travel experience.

The reason the travel industry has lagged behind modern expectations is because it has lagged behind the latest technological trends. It’s that simple.

Creating an End-to-End Journey is Hard

The process and protocols largely used today between providers have their base in travel standards agreed to in the 1960s and modified over time. Initially created to address airline interlining, allowing a single ticket to include flights on multiple air carriers, they have been pressed into service across the travel verticals.

As time has gone on the once workable solution has begun to show its limitations. There are multiple efforts in the industry to break with the past and pursue an approach where a travel offer may be handled much like any other retail offering in the digital space.

Travel, however, has some unique needs as products are transient (an empty seat is worthless after departure time) and in most cases specific to location (airplanes must land at an airport). Also, in most cases a travel product must be combined with another travel product to satisfy a request to create a trip.

Creating an end-to-end journey implies a combined offer from multiple offers proposed and/or serviced by multiple providers. This adds a level of complexity, maintaining relationships between offers, other retail categories avoid.

Key Takeaway: Focusing on the experience as a new approach to travel retail requires a new level of interoperability among participants in the travel market.

Addressing Interoperability Will Open Up Broad Opportunities

Solving the issues to support experience based, total trip, retail at scale could unlock massive economic opportunities for many of the current distribution channels operating today or create new ones. Mainstream distribution channels focus mainly on air which in the US had a total operating revenue of $120[1] billion. However, the total US travel revenue for 2019 was $1.1[2] trillion.

Much of that figure is consumers figuring out for themselves how to make arrangements, a huge, missed opportunity to leverage automation. To build the experiences people are looking for, outside of immediate travel and lodging portals like Expedia, consumers are bouncing between websites and calendars to find restaurants, museum passes and jet ski rentals.

The reason we aren’t seeing a wider variety of offerings is not hard to understand: For the mainline distributors it’s not worth the effort to connect, maintain and monitor small suppliers thru bespoke APIs.

By unlocking interoperability, providers of travel products and services would have access to channels they are currently shut out of due to costs and complexity. The public is eager to get out of the house and experience the world again but would like to avoid the odious task of DIY travel orchestration and management. They want experience led retailing which industries like hospitality are investing in but only at the property level, not at the full trip level.

The travel industry cannot afford to allow API chaos to continue to be a barrier to more effective retailing.

Getting Alignment on the Solution is Critical

In response, the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) and the OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) will work together to focus on API conventions and standards, not just messages. Within OAI, there is now a special interest group to focus on travel issues (#sig-travel).

The Travel SIG will be the conduit for the needs of the travel industry that pertain to the Open API Specification (OAS). The OAS is a broad specification intended to help developers solve real world business issues with as much flexibility as possible.

What is needed for interoperability and to reduce API chaos and hence distribution costs in travel is more consistency in API behaviors. OpenTravel will take the lead on providing open-source tooling and publishing reference architectures with refence implementations that adhere to the OAS. OTA 2.0 with its model driven approach will form the basis of this more comprehensive approach that supports all travel verticals. This will be in cooperation with existing travel standards bodies and trade associations.

The overriding goal will be to lower the cost of connectivity to publish, acquire, distribute, and market digital travel products.

What Can I do?

Join the conversation and help build a more modern and seamless travel industry! For more information on the OpenAPI Initiative and #sig-travel, join the conversation on Slack. https://open-api.slack.com/archives/C0122NPKUR2

For more information on OTA 2.0, including becoming an Open Travel member, go to www.opentravel.org or contact Jeff ErnstFriedman at jeff.ernstfriedman@opentravel.org.

[1] Source: Phocuswright White Paper, Air Sales and the Travel Agency Distribution Channel April 2019

[2] Source: U.S. TRAVEL AND TOURISM OVERVIEW (2019), US Travel Association.

Sep 23

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Kubeshop, Accelerator/Incubator for Kubernetes, Joins OpenAPI Initiative

By OpenAPI Initiative Announcement, Blog

The OpenAPI Initiative, the consortium of forward-looking industry experts focused on evolving and implementing the OpenAPI Specification (OAS), is announcing today that Kubeshop.io has joined as a new member. Kubeshop’s CTO, Ole Lensmar, served as the chairman of the OpenAPI Initiative from its inception in 2016 until 2020. We welcome back the familiar face!

Kubeshop is an open-source accelerator/incubator focused on Kubernetes (“K8s”). Kubeshop identifies needs and offers resources and guidance to projects within the k8s space, specifically focusing on helping Developers, Testers, and DevOPS engineers with tooling that strives to make complex workflows simpler and more productive. Currently, Kubeshop is home to Kusk, Kubtest, and Monokle:

Kusk allows users to work with an OpenAPI specification as the source of truth for Kubernetes manifests, simplifying cluster configuration and management across a number of popular Kubernetes Ingress Controllers
Kubtest provides a framework for testing of applications and APIs running under Kubernetes, allowing teams to decouple test orchestration and execution from ci/cd tooling and centralize test-result management and analysis
Monokle simplifies everyday tasks and workflows related to management and debugging of k8s manifests

“Joining and supporting the OAI was an obvious step for us; the OAI is central to the continued adoption and evolution of the OpenAPI Specification, and we are excited about the prospect of housing projects targeting OpenAPI specific needs and Kubernetes workflows,” said Ole Lensmar, CTO, Kubeshop.

We look forward to watching Kubeshop grow and evolve, and help out k8s developers!

OpenAPI Resources

To learn more about participate in the evolution of the OpenAPI Specification: https://www.openapis.org/participate/how-to-contribute

About the OpenAPI Initiative

The OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) was created by a consortium of forward-looking industry experts who recognize the immense value of standardizing on how APIs are described. As an open governance structure under the Linux Foundation, the OAI is focused on creating, evolving and promoting a vendor neutral description format. The OpenAPI Specification was originally based on the Swagger Specification, donated by SmartBear Software. To get involved with the OpenAPI Initiative, please visit https://www.openapis.org

About Linux Foundation

Sep 22

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Arnaud Lauret, the API Handyman, Covers His Top 4 Must-Attend Sessions at ASC 2021

By OpenAPI Initiative Blog, Events

We talked with Arnaud Lauret, well known as the API Handyman and author of The Design of Web APIs, to find out more about the upcoming ASC 2021 (Sept 28-29).

Lauret is presenting “Taking advantage of OpenAPI for API Design reviews” on Tuesday, September 28 starting at 11:20am PDT.

Lauret is a Senior API Architect at Natixis, based in Paris, France, currently helping everyone from executives to developers to understand what APIs are, why they matter and “how to do them.” He helps teams design their APIs by reviewing and challenging their designs, providing training and building API design guidelines.

During your live API design review demo session at ASC 2021, what are the top 3 key API design principles you will be covering?

Inside/Out, semantic, and consistency.

An API that is just a technical connector giving access to the underlying mess, throwing bluntly the inside to the outside, will be a total nightmare for consumers but also for providers. On the consumer side, people will get a complex API requiring a high level of expertise, requiring much effort to do simple things. On the provider side, you may have to fear unexpected consequences such as data corruption or security breaches.

Semantic is very important, the meaning of words is critical when designing an API. Choose the wrong word and people may not understand your intent, what the API is supposed to do, which value to provide or what they can do with returned data.

And last not but least of this top 3: consistency. Designing a consistent API is hard but it’s worth the cost. Being consistent with the rest of the world will make developers feel at home when they see your API for the first time. Being consistent across your APIs and within them will make developers able to make connections easily between operations, data models, or parameters and so they will be able to master your API without even thinking about it.

Can an API design review be based on facts, not opinions? Is this possible?

Yes. It’s not always that easy, but that’s what I try to do. An API design review based on baseless opinions has absolutely no interest. People don’t care if you prefer blue over orange. The question is why blue is better than orange in a given context. Everything that is proposed must be backed with reasonable explanations, facts.

Having guidelines is really a great help: those predefined rules provide factual arguments that everyone agrees on. But guidelines can’t solve all design questions, they provide only high level guidance, there always will be more specific functional/business questions leading to multiple possible designs. Each one conforming to guidelines. But which one is the “right” one? You’ll have to find “facts” to make a decision, you can take advantage of your knowledge of business rules, what will come in the near future, … As long as a solution has a valid explanation everyone agrees on, that’s a review based on facts.

What other presentations will you be attending at ASC 2021 and why?

Actually, I wish I could attend them all! There are so many interesting sessions, but here’s my top 4:

API Terms of Service : From Creative commons to Machine readability – Célya Gruson-Daniel, COSTECH & Mehdi Medjaoui: I’m a “machine-readability nerd,” I love this idea of trying to structure the unstructured because it simplifies both machines’ and humans’ job. Bringing machine-readability to TOS could have a major impact for me. It could simplify the comparison between service providers; and as a person participating to call for proposal processes to choose software solutions, I would be very happy with just that. And I’m sure there are other totally crazy outcomes. I can’t wait to attend to this one!
We brought OpenAPI Docs into our service catalog. Now what? – Shai Sachs & Zoe Song, Wayfair: I work in a large organisation, many different teams, many different APIs and that is not easy. The Wayfair session resonates with my context and they will also talk about Backstage open source service catalog that I’m interested in.
Finding Ways to Measure the Complexity of an API Design – Stephen Mizell, API Consultant: I help people design APIs and I design APIs. It’s not always easy to evaluate if a design is complex or not. Sometimes it just feels complex or simple, and I don’t like that, relying on just baseless feeling. I would prefer to back my evaluation by something more concrete, true facts if possible. That’s why I really look forward to what Stephen has to say on that topic.
Mistakes to avoid during API Specification Reviews – Rahul Dighe, PayPal: I have done hundreds of API design reviews. I have learned much, found solutions to various situations, but sometimes they don’t work or I can face totally new situations. That’s why I’m always interested in learning from what others do because they may have found other solutions to the same problems or be in a totally different context facing different situations.