June 24, 2020

Alex Woodie^[1]

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are not new. But API creation and consumption has surged in recent years as developers adopt more modular and extensible architectures for new and modernized applications. IBM i developers are getting into the act, too, which is leading vendors like Remain Software to cater to them with new tools, like its recently announced API Studio.

A recent survey by API marketplace provider RapidAPI concluded that almost 67 percent of developers expect their API use to increase in 2020 compared to 2019. The company’s CEO, Iddo Gino, said the survey results confirm what the company has seen with customers and partners: “A massive upward trend in API usage as companies continue to invest in making services and assets available through digital transformation initiatives.”

APIs streamline how organizations can expose and consume business logic and data over the network, no matter what platform. That’s one of the reasons why APIs are being adopted on IBM i, particularly among organizations that are modernizing their applications. APIs provide a vehicle for refactoring business process workflow after breaking up a monolithic application.

Last month, Remain Software launched API Studio, which provides IBM i and other developers a tool for creating and managing APIs; importing and exporting schemas; generating code; configuring security; testing the APIs; and documenting the new APIs, too.

According to Remain Software^[2], one of the core capabilities of API Studio is the visual editor, which allows developers to create REST-based APIs using the OpenAPI Specification (OAS) standard advocated by the Linux Foundation (formerly Swagger).

“The real power [of the product] lies in the ability to visually maintain your API specification in a human-readable, graphical way,” the company’s website says. There is “no need to bog yourself down in JSON or YAML source. The source code is available on the Source tab, for a peek or to maintain the code there, and the Schema tab will be updated accordingly. Once the specification is created, code can be generated to process the API.”