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How do I get started with APIs?
Make one real call to somebody else's API before you design your own — then design your first API around what a consumer needs, not around your database.
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API Basics 14
What an API actually is, the words people use for them, and the ideas everything else is built on.
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How many APIs should my organization have?
The wrong question. Ask instead how many you already have, who owns each one, and how many of them anybody actually uses — most organizations cannot answer any of the three.
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Is my API really RESTful?
Probably not, by the strict definition — and it almost certainly does not matter. Aim for consistent and usable, not doctrinally pure.
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What does REST actually mean?
REST is an architectural style that uses HTTP the way it was designed — resources at URLs, standard methods, standard status codes — and in practice "REST" has become a loose label for "a normal HTTP API."
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What is API governance?
Everything an organization does to make its APIs consistent, discoverable, safe and supportable — from a written style guide through automated linting to who is accountable when it goes wrong.
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What is MCP and do I need one for my API?
Model Context Protocol is how AI agents discover and call tools. You need one if you want agents to use your API reliably — but generating it blindly from a large OpenAPI is a mistake.
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What is an API key and is it actually secure?
An API key identifies the caller so you can meter, track and control them. On its own it provides very little security, and treating it as a fortress is one of the oldest mistakes in this space.
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What is an API strategy, and does a small team need one?
An API strategy is a written statement of which business capabilities you are exposing, to whom, why, and how you will support them. Even a two-person team needs the one-page version.
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What is an API?
An API is a contract that lets one piece of software ask another piece of software for something over a network, in a predictable, documented way.
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What is an OpenAPI document and why do I need one?
OpenAPI is a machine-readable description of your HTTP API. You need one because it is what documentation, mocks, tests, SDKs, gateways, governance and AI tooling are all generated from.
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What is the difference between Swagger and OpenAPI?
OpenAPI is the specification; Swagger is the name of the original project and now a family of tools. Swagger 2.0 was donated and renamed OpenAPI in 2015 — if you are writing new specs, you want OpenAPI 3.x.
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What is the difference between an API and a web service?
Historically a "web service" meant the SOAP and WS-* generation of enterprise interfaces; "web API" meant the simpler HTTP-and-JSON generation that displaced it. Today the terms are used loosely and mostly interchange...
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What is the difference between authentication and authorization?
Authentication verifies who you are. Authorization determines what you are allowed to do once you have been verified. Conflating them causes most API security confusion.
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Why do APIs matter to a business?
Because integration is where business value actually shows up — and because building APIs forces an organization to find out what it actually has.