UC Davis APIs

Owned by Gary Sharpe
Last updated: Jun 03, 2016

IET is exploring the possibility of providing an API Gateway and an API Management and Community Portal as a service to campus.  

Why do we need it?

APIs (Application Programming Interface) are “a set of routines, protocols and tools for building software applications” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface), and take many different forms based on programming language specifics, protocols, purpose, etc.  in this context we are referring to RESTful and SOAP based APIs and variations thereof, also known as Web Services or Web APIs.

Web Services represent a fundamental way to share functionality and data across applications over HTTP(S).  An API Management Platform designed for Web Services provides a means for distributed organizations to publish, manage and consume the APIs they develop themselves or the APIs provided by applications they have purchased or leased.

Here at UC Davis,

IET and other central administrative departments are stewards of data and programmatic services that could be shared in a widely accepted language independent fashion.

Our campus has a history of IT staff and developers working in a distributed fashion on projects sponsored by separate departments, colleges, administrative units, etc.  Some of the efforts internal to these projects to build APIs are sometimes of significant value to other units.

Many of the applications we host or contract with externally provide APIs for which we would like to administer access.  An API management platform can provide this central layer of user, group and permission management.

A robust API Management Platform includes:

  1. A portal for API discovery, sampling, documentation, and self-service style access requests.

  2. Management of access to APIs through delegated administration.

  3. The tools to Manage and Proxy access to the organizations APIs, whether developed, purchased or leased.  APIs may be developed and hosted anywhere, so long as they are accessible to the API Management Platform’s proxy.

  4. Access Control and Security, through keys, permissions, and re-usable policies.

  5. API usage monitoring and reports

Does anyone else on campus provide this service now?

To the best of our knowledge, no one is providing an API management platform as a service to the rest of campus.

API Management Platforms Evaluation and Summary (OLD - will be updated soon)