Part 1:The API Landscape

Before diving into the details of what API products are and how to build them, you will need to first look at the market landscape of API products to understand the products and services that exist in this space.

The history of the web-based APIs we know today can be traced back to the late 1990s when Salesforce launched a web-based sales automation tool. This application marks the beginning of the Software as a Service (SaaS) revolution. The World Wide Web has strengthened the underlying infrastructure that enables this newly discovered way of delivering software. Before the World Wide Web and the internet, APIs existed. Still, they were a form of proprietary protocol that supported small, distributed computer networks that spanned a limited area most of the time. The purpose of APIs in the pre-internet and post-internet eras is the same. APIs allow API providers to provide services, so external systems can call API providers to take advantage of those...