What You Can Expect as a Client, From SOAP to gRPC

I’m working hard on what I consider to be my definition of a robust API deployment toolbox, and was enjoying the 100K perspective. As I explore, I wanted to share some of my thoughts about by you might expect to receive as a client in each of these scenarios.

• SOAP: You get what the vendor says we can send to you in very structured way.
• REST: Is this what you want? Let us know if it wasn’t via StackOverflow.
• Hypermedia: We are prepared to send you whatever we want at any point in the future.
• Microservices: You are just going get a little bit of this one thing.
• GraphQL: You get exactly what you want, you better know what to ask for!
• Websockets: Here you get that, and this, and that, and that…
• PubSub: You get only the topic you wish to subscribe to.
• Webhooks: Here you asked us to send this to you–here you go.
• Event Architecture: You get something whenever that something happens.
• gRPC: You get what we want really fast, and can accept what we want really fast!!

It is fun to step back and think about the motivations, ideology, and pros/cons of each of these API deployment scenarios. I’d love to hear your additions or perspective on what you think the client view of the conversation might be. As I see the API universe continue to expand, I’m curious to see how others are seeing it.

In coming months you’ll hear me write more about event-driven architecture, gRPC, and how the pace of things are picking up when it comes to API consumption. I’m working with Streamdata.io to help try and map out this landscape, as well as some of the usual areas I focus on as the API Evangelist.