API Evangelist

Hello antigen8,
I wanted to clarify my reasoning for including Socrata in that list of software suggestionss. All-in-one solutions often don't address and sometimes actually create a coupling of your data and the applications you utilize to access it or create value from it.

Your initial post mentioned a data store. And we've talked about Tableau. A data store, data warehouse, or database will usually be separate from the applications making use of the data. Analytics software, such as Tableau, makes use of the data source, but is not necessarily meant to be your data source. (http://www.tableau.com/solutions/data-sources and http://www.tableau.com/solutions/environments)

One solution to this problem is to go with an "API-First" architecture pattern. (https://www.leaseweblabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/api_first.pdf)

The API-First pattern creates an abstraction layer between your application and data source. You can then make changes to your data source (say, switch from MS Access to MS SQL Server, or go from using a collection of Excel files to a single Oracle database) without requiring any changes to your applications. Or, conversely, you could switch out, add to, or remove some of your applications (say, switch from Tableau to Pentaho) without having to touch your data sources.
http://onlinehelp.tableau.com/v8.0/pro/online/en-us/extracting_TDE_API.html
http://www.tableau.com/new-features/data-engine-api-0
http://open-source.socrata.com/architecture/

So really…

Saw a good roundup of the MBaaS providers, here:
http://apievangelist.com/2012/08/22/mobile-backend-as-a-service-roundup-and-the-future-of-web-apis/

We use Parse for some apps and roll our own Rails backend too. Of all the MPaaS providers we've investigate, Parse seems to be getting things right: SDK's are solid & the documentation is up-to-date, 3rd party integration with Twitter / FB / S3 work great. It's a joy to get started.

The biggest problem we've seen so far are on caching, user models, analysis and emails:

- Local native caching on devices seems capricious, and we've often reverted to writing our own caching schemes on top of Parse (had to do the same for server-side, too, but maybe that's a given...)

- User data model is pretty basic, and although the ACL capabilities are nice, it's not easy to build (FB invite requests work, but outside of that framework you have to roll your own invite / accept / reject / exit logic)

- Custom emails on User model CRUD / password are supported, but not for any other user interaction (ie., weekly roundup emails, status updates, etc.)

- API introspection is tough, it's not easy to optimize (ok, minimize) API calls and some form of introspection & analysis would be helpful (eg., just when do the SDK libraries synchronize, and how often?)

All that being said, I don't think any of their competitors have done a better job on these topics and certainly Parse seems to be pulling away from the MPaaS pack.

1) Have the internal team use the same public API as much as possible. I believe Steve Yegge (of Google and Yahoo) wrote a long article about this concept. Here's a link[1] but I can't remember if it's the definitive one I read before. By forcing your internal developers to use the same API, you see the frustrations of any incoherent designs that outsiders would see. Also, bug fixes fix the defects for private & public users.

2) Design the API to encourage clients to stumble into the "pit of success." I believe Microsoft's .NET team originated this phrase.[2] This means sensible defaults for the the most common tasks. It leads to related maxims such as "make easy tasks easy and hard tasks possible."

3) Additional documentation that's organized thematically around "tasks", "workflow", "usage scenarios", and "concepts". It's not enough just to have a dump of functions listed in alphabetical order presented as a "reference guide". The reference guides are important but people unfamiliar with the new API need some handholding and reference guides don't do that. The task-oriented documentation would be things like "Getting Started" or "working demos".

[1]http://apievangelist.com/2012/01/12/the-secret-to-amazons-success-internal-apis/

[2]http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brada/archive/2003/10/02/50420.aspx

Would add two points:

1. Internal Jeff Bezos memo from around 2002 that everything should be a web service, which eventually can be externalize: http://apievangelist.com/2012/01/12/the-secret-to-amazons-success-internal-apis/

"Anyone who doesn’t do this will be fired. Thank you; have a nice day!"

2. AWS started in 2006 with EC2 (provision service through API) and S3 (some file storage). Simple, but primitive building blocks.

Google entered game early in 2008 with App Engine. Very powerful, but restricted Platform as a Service. It pretty much requires to rewrite whole application from scratch and doesn't let you do tons of stuff.

Eventually AWS is keep adding services with more functionality (SimpleDB, DynamoDB, SQS), while it took quite a while Google to realize that it needs to provide bare servers too. So both approaches converge, but Amazon capture magnitude more revenues from cloud infrastructure.

Opinion from ApiEvangelist: "Ultimately, the move by LInkedIn is no surprise to me, and the platform is purely a distribution channel for me, and has been for some time.. Meaning I only syndicate content there, and you will never find me actually engaging very deep on the platform, building relationships there, because along with other platforms like Quora I do not have any ownership over any of the exhaust I generate. As a professional this is unacceptable to me, as I have a valuable brand that I carefully maintain. As other professionals realize this, they too will mostly abandon the business social network, leaving it to be a spammy corner of the Internet where HR professional prey upon the semi-professional, aspiring employee types."
http://apievangelist.com/2015/02/12/changes-to-linkedin-developer-program-are-no-surprise/

Dublin, Ireland. ( CTO for Evercam, an IP Camera Developer Platform )

We're building www.evercam.io an API that makes it easy to develop for cameras. Initially IP cameras, but in principal any type of camera.

The task is challenging and the opportunity is large. The Internet of Things needs a visual cortex.

We're a team of 8. 4 coders and 4 non-coders. We're looking for a strong CTO type who can also code. The stack is Ruby based.

Significant equity & a decent salary on offer.

Read all about it: http://apievangelist.com/2014/01/21/a-world-where-every-camera-is-connected-to-the-internet-via-apis/