The coming together of APIs and Services

David Linthicum writes that "for the last year we've been in a silent revolution around the use of APIs/services."

One striking fact is that APIs and services have come together. A couple of years ago people may not have understood a Web/XML interface as an "API". But now a Web/XML interface it is not only "just another example of an API", but for many newer product it is main API interface which is provided.

For example, Vordel's products include a number of Web/XML interfaces of their own, for things like user provisioning. This is a kind of "eating our own dog food" because we use our own secure XML pipeline for those services. If people ask "do you have an API", we answer "yes, we have a Java API and a SOAP API". Different purposes, but both examples of APIs.