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Ask Slashdot: Best API Management System?

Posted by Soulskill on from the notepad-and-lots-of-coffee dept.

An anonymous reader writes: I've landed a summer internship with a software firm that has a library of APIs available to current and potential customers. One of my team's tasks is to make recommendations on how to improve the developer portal, which not only provides a testing sandbox and documentation, but is also a source of sales leads for the company's business units. Mashery was the original choice for this task, but there are some limitations: some types of customers don't need to see all of the API in the library, and different business units have different goals for this developer platform when it comes to sales and marketing. What solutions work best to provide scaleable, customizable access?

2 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. You are Doomed by frovingslosh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    and different business units have different goals for this developer platform when it comes to sales and marketing

    When you let sales and marketing drive technical decisions, brace for failure.

    Years ago I worked for mini-computer maker Data General (a.k.a "Data Who"). One of the things that took down that company was the the engineers, architects and designers built amazing technology that was far ahead of anyone else. Then marketing would come in and say "Fantastic! Great Job! Now we just need you to remove this feature and that feature, because. as it is. this machine out preforms that bigger, older, more expensive system that we are already selling." Look where that company is now.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  2. Let me fix one requirement for you by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >> some types of customers don't need to see all of the API in the library

    Don't try to go down that road. If you start hiding functions through obscurity, they will pop out anyway (through code samples, forums, reverse engineering, pentesting, etc.) and will only lead to bad things (developers pissed at you for "crappy, incomplete documentation," customers laughing at you for "trying to hide the best stuff," salespeople people yelling at you for not exposing something you've already written but they didn't know they needed until they walked out of a customer meeting, top executives yelling at everyone when a security researcher finds a big flaw in a rarely used function call that everyone forgot about).

    Signed,
    Dude With 15 Years Experience With Web APIs
    (Who Has Had Much Of This Happen To Him Or His Company)