An Architect's Approach to API Strategies
summary
Compares concrete API styles and their trade-offs: RPC/SOAP give fast, tightly coupled endpoints that are easy to ship but brittle; REST (Richardson levels) delivers evolvability and identity if you design resources and can add hypermedia using JSON-LD or Hydra; GraphQL gives precise queries but breaks caching and idempotency; gRPC suits low‑latency microservice calls. Claims integration consumes 35–65% of IT budget, so choice hinges on who controls clients, expected lifetime, and whether network efficiency or evolvability matters.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction and biases
- 3:10Trade-offs in architecture
- 7:05APIs from single use to integration
- 13:09Evaluating API strategies
- 16:17RPC and its challenges
- 21:18SOAP and its limitations
- 27:18REST and the web's architecture
- 34:54Hypermedia and RESTful APIs
- 42:03Richardson Maturity Model
- 45:38Level zero APIs and hidden costs
- 52:20GraphQL and its trade-offs
- 56:41gRPC for microservices
- 59:12Conclusion and key takeaways
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