An introduction to APIs

Establishing connections between systems can be very challenging, depending on the use case and performance requirements. Systems need to have a way to interact with each other and programmatically retrieve information or take action. This is particularly critical when you’re trying to build automation into data or DevOps pipelines where systems need to have secure communication methods and actions taken can have a meaningful impact on production environments.

Historically, integrations were custom and needed a lot of effort to be maintained. Whenever the source or destination software had an update, whether it was bug fixes or new feature sets, it would typically require a review of the integration given that the changes may have broken it. Entire technology companies began to surface and be built around system integration from both software and service perspectives. Fivetran and Airbyte are great examples of organizations that built their core value...