looking at many API, there are common pitfalls in developer experience.

1. Common pitfalls in API ecosystem
～Redefine UX to DX～
CData Software Japan
Jonathan Hikita

2. Why those APIs hard to use?
API ARU-ARU

3. About Speaker
Jonathan Hikita
•GM, CData Software Japan LLC
Career summary
•15+ yrs of utilizing enterprise data
•10 yrs in Financial (JPN, Indonesia etc)
•Global Operation of Dev Component vendor
•Establishing CData Software’s Japan operation
•Love KARATE and Heavy Metal
@cdatajapan
@keisuke.hikita.5
https://qiita.com/jonathanh

4. Summary:
Redefine your browser-based web-service UX
to Developer Experience (DX)

5. 1. About CData Software

6. About CData Software
Bi-directional Access to Live App, Database, & Web API Data Through Standard Drivers
・CData Software, Inc. / Started: 1994 (/nsoftware)
・Location: Chapel Hill, NC a spin-off of /n software
・CData Japan: 2016/6 (JV with Infoteria)
・20+ years of providing data-related development components
・100+ supported data sources
・”See the World as a Database”

7. 1 Chome-6-27 Chuo, Aoba Ward,
Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture
980-0021, Japan
Tel: 050-5578-7390
CData Japan
101 Europa Dr. #110
Chapel Hill, NC 27517 USA
Tel: (919) 928-5214
Fax: (919) 928-5455
US Headquarters
- Central & Eastern Europe
- Central China
Additional Development Offices
Global and Japan Local Operations
Worldwide Offices for Global Sales and Support

8. Largest enterprise data source coverage
Drivers for NoSQL, Big Data, & SaaS Connectivity
CRM & Marketing
Accounting
Collaboration & ERP
DB
Documents and file formats
SNSNetworking and protocols
EC and fintech
Others

9. CData standardize data in RDB ⇔ Web APIs
Enable real-time data integration with hundreds of applications, databases, and Web APIs
Data Drivers
Makes Web API accssible from
JDBC/ODBC/ADO standard
interface
API Server
Easiest way to create
professional REST APIs from DBs

10. Must use web APIs, no more SQLs
SQL
Officeツール

11. SQL access to 100+ SaaS & cloud DBs by CData
SQL
Officeツール

12. CData Drivers
Bi-directional Access to Live App, Database, & Web API Data Through Standard Drivers
REST
/SOAP
SQL
Your Service

13. What’s inside CData Drivers?
Give schema like RDB, enable standard SQL, give enterprise level security features
• JSON/XML data is
mapped to tables
• Auto-detects schema
from unstructured
data
• Enable SQL-92
• Full CRUD
• JOIN, filtering,
aggregation etc.
• Makes it easier from
application to access
• More sophysticated
framework use.
• Firewall, proxy, other
security
requirements
• Authentication, log
and other
management.
Table modeling
(schema detection)
SQL engine Standard Interface Security etc.
ODBC

14. CData Software Japan Customers

15. OEM Partners-by Global #1 players,
by Japan’s #1 players
Embedded In The Leading BI, ETL, Data Integration, Data Virtualization, and Data Warehousing Tools

16. 2. This sessions target audiences

17. Target audience is non-API first services
• To make the base service users happy ---- YES
• To acquire new channels ---- YES
• API is the original way of using the service ---- NO

18. 3. Common pitfalls of API DX

19. We (CData) support 100+ APIs

20. We even make API-Tools network mapping

21. So, trust us, we have seen and used many.

22. API use requires paper agreements
• NDA, agreement
• Worst was 10 pages checklist on
companies size, financials,
security, etc.
• Why require months to try APIs

23. API reference in PDF・Excel
• Excels, PDFs, Words
• Sometimes even CD-ROM
• How can you expect users to
use the latest API docs?

24. Crazy API Limit
• Sometimes, API rate limits hit with
just 1 complex request
• I often panic right before my
session when this happens

25. POST, POST, POST for everything
• There is only POST methods
• Retrieve, Delete, Insert, Update,
all are done with POST putting
parameters in Body
• Often has different URI for each
types of calls

26. No endpoint list
• This means that humans need to
refer to API docs
• No dynamic schema detection
• SCHEMA is what applications
need.

27. Why respond with “￥” mark?
・Currency fields sometimes respond with
strings with “yen” mark
・Stop making everything “strings”
・So many confusions on data types

28. Give summary, no records
・Can retrieve total, but no details
・Sometimes, APIs refused to give
details but only aggregated data. At the
same time you can POST individual data.

29. Mix of Resource oriented & Function oriented
・REST APIs supposed to be resource oriented.
However, many verbs in URIs.
Ex. https://XXX.com/getXXX
・Find, Search are often seen, too.

30. Allow POST only
• Can only do POST and CSV uploads.
• User cannot retrieve their data
through APIs
• This limits API use very much

31. Different URI contents for GET/POST
• Cannot retrieve the list of what you
have POSTed.

32. Abbreviation resource name, in Japanese
Ex.
・ Opportunity OPP
Japanese Roma-ji abbreviation is tough・
・GL master-> KKM(kanjo-kamoku-master)

33. Support cannot support APIs
• “You can try, but please do not
ask any support questions”
・ “Please post to StackOverflow”

34. Beta for no reason
• Stay beta for years
• It is hard for engineers to
commit to be ta API

35. 4. What we learn from them

36. What is often said
• Be as RESTful as possible
• Give Meta-data
• Care about standards.

37. Those are structural/architectural matters.
But that is not what I want to talk today.

38. Remember, your users are developers now
Underlying service
users
Non-Engineer
API users
Engineers
• Browser use
• Routine work
• Look and input
• manual
• Top-down decision making入
• Trust, stability
• Code
• Create new ways of usage
• Read schema and let machine decide
• AUTOMATION
• Fast evaluation cycle
• Change, innovation

39. Persona is different, redefine UX to DX
UX
User Experience
→
DX
(Developer Experience)

40. Strong Gravity from underlying UX

41. This gravity is very, very strong in Japan
• F2F sales oriented culture
• Large reliance on consultation and all-in services
• Tokyo-centric economy

42. How to get out from old UX
• API PM (if cannot, evangelist/advocate need to play some roles)
• API UI
• API portal (Dev portal) on web
• API documents (ideally auto-generated and match with meta-data)
• SEO
• SDK
• Drivers
• Others
• Give trials for API users
• No paper, no f2f unless requested
• Support that can handle technical questions

43. Message:
Just knowing this makes things different:
Gravity from underlying services exists
API UX can be and should be different from underlying service UX

44. Thank you