allow for the exchange of data and services
provide building blocks that you can leverage in applications
encourages transparency, interoperability, and scalability
allows agile, nimble, and flexible operations
the web is full of (un)structured data
data from one API might feed into another
consuming data isn’t hard
consuming lots of data and relating it across APIs can be time consuming
using existing services to create a new service
in hackathons, the successful teams are often the ones that can most efficiently combine and leverage existing services
working with individual APIs is easy, but orchestrating an operation across multiple APIs can be very challenging
developed by eBay’s platform engineering group
a domain-specific language for working with HTTP APIs
orchestrates and optimizes mashups across multiple APIs
creates consumer centric interfaces
table: mapping of an HTTP resource
select: retrieve data from tables
URI templates: used in create table statements