All APIs must be registered in a central catalog or registry with consistent metadata, tags, and descriptions, ensuring that producers and consumers can find existing APIs before building new ones, reducing duplication and improving reuse across the organization.
APIs Are Discoverable Through a Central Catalog
Policies
API Catalog (Experience)
Require that every API is registered in a central, searchable catalog with enough metadata that a developer can find it, understand it, and decide to use it without asking anyone. I care deeply abo...
Metadata for APIs
Unique identifier, name, description, tags, and other metadata for the API that defines the purpose of each individual API, and how it benefits API producer and consumers, establishing the base of ...
Names for APIs
Providing a clear, descriptive, and concise name for each API, as well as the APIs it contains, properly defining the scope, with an intuitive first impression of an API.
Descriptions for APIs
Providing a robust description of each API, providing the right amount of information for consumers to understand what is possible and what the business use case is.
Images for APIs
Including images as part of the metadata for your APIs helps make APIs more visible as part of portals, documentation, and other resources.
Tags for APIs
Tags provide a bounded context for your APIs, providing keywords that help organize APIs by domains, and make them more discoverable.
Unique Identifiers for APIs
Providing unique identifiers for API apis, as well as the APIs that are indexed as part of an API, providing a key reference for discovery and automating around a contract.
Metadata for APIs.json Contracts
Unique identifier, name, description, tags, and other metadata for the contract that defines the purpose of the API Contract, and how it benefits API producer and consumers, establishing the base o...
Experiences
Discovery
The average enterprise maintains approximately 0.5 APIs per employee, making it a constant challenge to track the growing inventory of HTTP APIs being produced and consumed. Enterprises often addre...
Onboarding
Transitioning from API discovery to integration as a consumer requires a well-defined and streamlined API onboarding process. Onboarding begins with discovery and relies heavily on clear documentat...
Self-Service
Self-service is the experience of a consumer being able to discover, access, and integrate an API without having to talk to a human. Portals, sign-up flows, documentation, and keys let developers g...
Reusability
Reusability is the experience of finding and applying an existing API instead of building the same capability again. It depends on discovery, consistent design, and clear documentation that make an...
Alignment
Achieving alignment between teams producing APIs and their consumers is a persistent challenge in API operations. Effective collaboration between business and technical stakeholders requires ongoin...
