What is a good API?
100 years ago, London exported the subway to the world, Paris exported the sewer, and New York exported the power grid. Under the construction of the new information infrastructure, the 5G network and the digital applications on it should undoubtedly become a model point for China's contribution to the world's digital world, and it is worth waiting to see which city will become this benchmark and world-class exhibition hall.
With the scale of 5G construction, edge computing and 5G To B have become hot topics in the industry, and the opening of pipeline capabilities has once again become the focus of attention of operators. In the near future, whether it is Vodafone's "Network as a Platform" NaaP or Swisscom's Falcon plan, both aim to create a new generation of technology and platform companies to achieve the grand goal of digitizing operators themselves and enabling industry digitization.
In a recent exchange with the customer’s senior management, the customer asked a very good question, what is a good API? It is true that no matter how grand strategic conception and no matter how great the industrial blueprint, it will be implemented in the future, so it is impossible to bypass the mechanism and method through which capabilities can be defined and accessed in a better API way. Even with today's servitization, the concept of cloud native is inseparable from API in the final analysis, and the entire ecological economy and platform economy are also API economy.
In fact, from the beginning of the BT 21st century network at the end of the last century, to the subsequent transformation of operators that swept the world, there were Telefonica’s Unica project, Deutsche Telekom’s “next generation factory” NGF, Vodafone and other Ocean projects, all of which are essentially hope To build a generation of digital platforms, we all look forward to defining a series of APIs based on standards. However, in the past ten years, the experience and lessons that are worth summarizing happen to be "what is a good API"?
Before answering this question, we might as well take a look at what new challenges are facing this wave of operators' digital transformation? What is the essence of API used for?
The traditional telecommunications industry also has a large number of APIs based on hardware and signaling, but these APIs are more static and carry pre-determined services. They are spread in the telecommunications industry circle and only a few people can understand. The programs and codes are also standard. Good correspondence and translation. Therefore, these APIs are based on paper delivery to a large extent, with little change.
But today, whether it is the mobile Internet or the industrial Internet after 5G, it is about to face the uncertainty of thousands of applications. At this time, the platform and API have to face three major challenges: First, how to maintain the flexibility and flexibility of the API Vitality, namely sustainable evolution and iteration? Second, how to spread the API, how to let more people who don't need to know the details of network business or even the knowledge of telecommunications understand the API and use the API? Third, how to
realize API and form a commercial closed loop?
There is no silver bullet and killer trick, but the old ways of the past have repeatedly proved not worth repeating. Based on the open source community, it may be worth a try.
First, define the MEC API based on the running code, and form a corresponding and closed loop with the standard to promote the maturity of the standard;
Secondly, discuss APIs with vendors, partners, operators, customers, and users in the open source community to deliver APIs without loss;
Third, through the common application market built by the community, explore the application monetization and sharing mechanism after the market is jointly expanded; creatively talk about business on the basis of quantity, and avoid empty talk about business innovation around single-digit applications.
Perhaps only simple, convenient, widely used, commonly defined and widely disseminated, and commercially positive APIs are good APIs, and this needs to be done based on open source De-factor and the community.
Attachment: Reference answer without standard answer
If you want to provide a high-quality public API interface, you need to do at least the following six points:
• Authorized developer rules
• Pay attention to current limit control
• Determine whether to charge
• Generally, if you charge, the more requests, the more money ——You need to prepare a pricing table
• Use good tools to monitor the server
• Good technology and help documents
• Support, support, support