API landscape complexity
To fully understand the complexity of API proliferation and the related OAuth implications, let’s start to enumerate what kind of API we can encounter today in an enterprise landscape.
The following table summarizes the most common use cases for APIs in an enterprise landscape:
API |
Description |
Example |
Application frontend API |
An HTTP endpoint that belongs to the application and is designed to be consumed by the application’s user |
Single-Page Application (SPA) |
Application automation API |
A publicly exposed HTTP endpoint that belongs to the application and is designed to be consumed by an automation service in a controlled way |
Automatic processes need to query the application |