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Relational Data and Custom Codeless APIs App Blueprint

We utilize relational data models to improve database performance and allow users to recreate real-world relationships. The shipping and tracking app blueprint showcases these capabilities in action, with the help of custom codeless APIs.

App blueprints are more than just templates from which to build a specific type of application. We design all of our free App Blueprints to provide one or more key functions that a developer would want to add to their application, regardless of the app’s business use.

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Representing Problem Details in HTTP APIs: An Introduction to RFC 7807 [Video]

Almost all APIs have a way of how problems and errors can be reported, making it easier to understand for the API consumer that something went wrong, and what went wrong. How to do that depends on the API style, API technology, and the specific API design. In all these cases, this part of API design needs to be addressed as part of the overall design work.

For APIs using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), some minimal reporting can be done using HTTP’s status codes. HTTP status codes are interesting because they already provide a certain level of details, with ~60 different codes reporting a variety of conditions which are defined by HTTP itself and a few other specifications.

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Hands-on With Spectral: Using API Linting for Better API Design and Governance [Video]

Spectral is an open-source API linting tool that allows users to write rules which then can be used to check API descriptions. Typically, these would be in description languages such as OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, or Swagger. If you’re interested in an overview and an introduction, check out this interview with Spectral maintainer Phil Sturgeon where he walks us through the history of Spectral, what it does, and how it can be used.

7 Steps

In this article and presentation, we’re diving a bit deeper. Axway Catalyst, Chris Wood walks us through seven steps in which you can learn how to use Spectral for an increasingly powerful set of tasks. This means you can start making Spectral part of your API platform and your API governance with very little effort and can level up the way you’re using it over time.

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Busy or Lazy?: Design API in Anypoint Studio

Creating API design using Anypoint Studio is a cool feature added by MuleSoft.

Now we can create API design from the comfort of our home, i.e., our Anypoint Studio. We can also test using Mocking Service and publish API Specs to Exchange from Anypoint Studio. No need to login to Anypoint Platform, again and again, to make changes in API Specs.

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Secure API Design With OpenAPI Specification

Editor’s Note: The following is an article written for and published in DZone’s 2021 API Design and Management Trend Report.

API security is at the forefront of cybersecurity. Emerging trends and technologies like cloud-native applications, serverless, microservices, single-page applications, and mobile and IoT devices have led to the proliferation of APIs. Application components are no longer internal objects communicating with each other on a single machine within a single process — they are APIs talking to each other over a network.

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Effective API Design: 5 Principles to Keep Customers Coming Back

Editor’s Note: The following is an article written for and published in DZone’s 2021 API Design and Management Trend Report.

It is easy to get lost in the hype and excitement of our technological decisions — which database to use, which dependency injection framework works best, and which programming language is superior — and lose focus on our goal: Create an application that most effectively solves a customer’s problem. While languages and tools are an important facet of software design, they are not the only aspects we must consider. 

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4 Mistakes That Prevent Your Java APIs From Having More Users

When you have more people using your Java APIs, your projects grow and naturally you become a better engineer. You become more likely to increase your incomes and join great new projects. It also enables people to get their jobs done faster. So it’s a win-win situation.

To keep those people who already use your API and attract more, you need to eliminate these 4 mistakes.

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3 Principles for Java Engineers to Stay Up-to-date With Technology

Java Engineers can adopt several strategies to stay up-to-date with technology. One of the most natural ones is by developing frameworks and libraries. By doing that, they often find themselves in one of these two situations:

  1. Any significant change in their code would break their client’s applications. So, they struggle with releasing extra features. Most of their releases comprise only minor bug fixes.
  2. Although they often release versions containing extra features, their clients never upgrade. Upgrading to the recent version would take too much effort, and the clients don’t have the time for that.

If you find yourself in one of those situations, you need to know the 3 principles that sustain great frameworks and libraries. Applying these principles in your APIs will put you on the path to staying up-to-date.

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Creating a Formal API Program With James Higginbotham

The year 2020 saw an unprecedented and transformative shift for the IT industry. The lockdowns forced us all to shut down our offices and work from home, which called for IT departments everywhere to rise to the occasion and use technology to become more agile, responsive, and resilient.

As we reach the end of the year, it becomes vital for us to look at how digital transformation is currently being implemented within organizations, and what businesses are doing to improve their IT infrastructure in 2021 and beyond.

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Creating an API Story With Mike Amundsen: Podcast

Applying an API-first approach means designing an API so that it has consistency, as well as adaptability, regardless of the types of development projects to which it's applied. Designing with this approach means building an API that is more than just a byproduct of an internal system.

Developers should be able to quickly and easily understand how your API works and how it can integrate with other applications. Only then can they write the kind of elegant code that will allow them to efficiently interact with other systems.

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API Versioning

Versioning is the term what computer software industry folks use. But the general/ equivalent term (at least as I believe) is the Evolution.

Evolution is something that we all go through and it’s applicable for every single object in this world.

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How Many API Calls Should You Do?

Overview: APIs provide access to valuable mainframe data, but deciding whether to add to an existing API or create a new one can be a difficult task. Evaluating a variety of factors can help make it easier to determine which option makes sense.


As applications evolve, they will often need access to data and processing on the mainframe. If the necessary APIs are available, this becomes an easy task, however, the architecture isn’t always there, creating a roadblock. Teams are faced with choices on how to deliver value quickly and set up the architecture to address future challenges.

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5 Tips for Better REST API Design

There is no doubt that "API" has become the de-facto standard for exchanging information between systems and also helps in better integration within components of a system. 

In this article, I will share some of the practices that I followed while working on multiple REST APIs design and implementation.

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Surprisingly Simple Tools to Help You Smash API-First Approach

API-First is an approach of defining your API specification before jumping into the development phase. With an API-first approach, instead of starting with code, you could start with design, planning, mocks, and tests.

By choosing an API-First approach, teams can crystallize their vision before development, removing the unnecessary complexity in implementation to deliver a resourceful, smart API that can no only keep R&D costs low, but has the ability to meet today’s modern IT landscape where a single operation to query several systems and components to get the job done. The specification is shared internally, as a general to-do list for the project teams to work on independently.

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Are You Doing This With Your API?

Not all API design is created equal!

Consider the following image:

It was taken at a location not too far from my residence. A few years ago, a company headquarters was relocated to space just to the west of where this photo was taken. The picture above provides a view of the east-most entrance/exit to the property and shows that the necessary time was taken to create a sidewalk entrance — including the brail-based "warning track".