API Abstraction is key to an API first strategy

January 7, 2021

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API abstraction provides a unique solution for large enterprises looking to scale their API efforts as part of an API first digital strategy. In this post we look at what abstraction is, why it’s needed, and the 6 key benefits of using abstracted APIs as your system of record and main API objects, rather than code.

Large enterprises have a gap in their API efforts: holding APIs as code is the cause

As a large enterprise trying to scale your API efforts as part of an API first digital strategy, you’re likely now at a stage where you need to:

Open up your APIs to a wider audience – to be discovered and consumed by internal (e.g LoBs, product owners) and external (e.g. partners in your API ecosystem) stakeholders
Manage, organize and group together thousands of APIs which encapsulate your business capabilities and IT functions, not just 10-100 open APIs
Manage different types of APIs and versions for different technologies/runtime environments (e.g. business capability, internal IT, public/partner/3rd party APIs, but also REST, SOAP, events, emerging technologies)
Store artifacts which are related to those APIs; such as lineage, mappings, conformance to data models, and security policies (and other common shared services)

What’s more, you likely want all of the above in a single unified view, understandable by both business and IT. But, relying on the implementation code for your APIs makes this near impossible – that’s because API code is hard to interrogate and understand beyond a handful of skilled developers, and it’s likely held in disparate systems across the enterprise’s architecture.

Abstracting your APIs provides an unique solution and can be used to deliver all of the needs above, in supporting API first at scale.

What is API abstraction?

Simply put, abstraction can take your APIs away from their complex code and implementation specifics, into a common metadata framework, to make them understandable by everyone in the enterprise in a standardized format.

When working with abstraction, two objects are involved to ensure your APIs are usable by both business and technical users:

A pure abstracted view of the API: This is what we call a Design. A code- and implementation-agnostic view which contains abstracted capabilities of what the API does/will do once realized. Designs are a representation of your business capabilities and technical functions.
A semi-abstracted service representation of the Design: This is what we call a Specification. A technical view of your API which contains implementation-specific technical details e.g. methods with a de-coded payload structure and non-functional requirements. These are versioned, and importantly contain enough detail to be used to generate runtime artifacts off-of (API code, contract, configuration, and documentation), enabling you to get back to the code to actually run the APIs.

Benefits of using API abstraction for a successful API strategy

1. An extended audience for your APIs

Your catalog of APIs and Services becomes understandable by an extended audience as the detail and business logic is not locked away in the code. Many more roles internally in your enterprise, as well as approved external users can discover, understand, and use your APIs and Services – all with a reliable consumer experience:

Business users such as product owners
Other technical users
Partners

Users of your abstracted APIs can easily learn:

What APIs your organization already has
How the APIs work
Who owns the APIs
What the upcoming API versions are

2. APIs can be reused to support new digital products

As APIs are abstracted into a common framework and therefore standardized format, they can be easily combined together, and repurposed into what we call Product Bundles (which includes API products, composite APIs etc.). These bundles can be used to quickly build, test, and launch innovative new digital products using your existing capabilities.

3. Normalized, consistent and well-governed API code and documentation

The metadata in the abstracted APIs can be used directly to generate normalized and consistent code, contracts, configuration, and documentation; in formats that can be used and digested by different runtime systems e.g. API gateways or code repositories like an SCM configuration.

Alternatively, if only API documentation is needed, this can be generated in easy-to-read formats like word or excel.

Abstraction also allows your APIs to easily be aligned to an API governance model upstream in the API lifecycle.

4. Flexibility on alternative/future coding standards and formats

With abstraction, the system of record for your APIs is the Design (pure abstraction) and Specification (service representation), rather than the runtime code. This means that the abstracted API can easily be redeployed, and pointed to a different downstream target, increasing responsiveness for your enterprise to the ever changing digital landscape, and preventing vendor lock-in.

This flexibility also makes IT modernization efforts easier like legacy SOAP to REST or wrapping REST in GraphQL, and futureproofs your APIs for whatever technology or coding standard comes next.

5. Enables you to build a holistic catalog of your API and Service landscape

Once your APIs are abstracted into a common standard, you can organize them and create types of service (e.g. business capability API, system IT API, facade/experience API, 3rd party API) and map them to business and technical taxonomies. You can also record inter-dependencies and relationships (e.g. lineage and mappings) between your APIs and their versions, as well as understand their conformance to data models and security policies etc. This gives you a holistic catalog view of your API landscape; all the different sources of each API and where they are in the lifecycle, which are suitable for reuse and can be approved to do so, and which are not reusable and are just registered into the catalog.

6. Ease of abstracted API reporting

With abstraction comes easy reporting on API coverage, maturity, governance and regulatory compliance. This enables better tracking of KPIs and business value that your APIs are delivering; something which is extremely difficult to do if your APIs are held in code.

The ignite platform provides a unique ability to abstract your APIs and reap these benefits

The ignite platform from digitalML provides a holistic API and Service catalog with extended lifecycle. Your existing APIs and Services can be imported and automatically abstracted into the common metadata framework we’ve discussed in this post, along with taxonomies, information models, and business glossaries. Once you have imported, organized, and normalized your APIs into Designs and Specifications, ignite’s robust integrations with CI/CD and runtime systems, and template-driven artifact generation enables you to deploy your APIs directly from the catalog. Check out our deep-dive video on ignite’s abstraction and integrations here.

About the Author

Gemma Sindall
Gemma is a Marketing Manager at digitalML. She has a keen interest in digital strategy and the best ways to merge people, process and technology. Her experience spans Marketing and Client Services in the Technology and Financial Services industries.

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