Understanding API design considerations

The API design process involves analyzing the business and technical requirements against a set of predefined criteria or constraints, and then arriving at an optimal design to achieve the expected results. These criteria, also known as design considerations, will be covered in the following subsections.

Coupling

Coupling refers to the degree of interdependency between the components or modules of a software system. A good design is one that has low coupling. In the context of API-led architectures, there will be multiple APIs and underlying subsystems involved in the solution. Low coupling will allow you to change or upgrade the components independently, without this impacting any other components in the system.

By focusing on building the components as atomic, self-contained parts, you can get optimal flexibility and improve your reusability. You can change or replace the components quite easily.

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