API? The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

With the impending 5Series 4.94 release bringing enhancements to the 5Series APIs, here's why we think APIs are so crucial in today's software industry. 

Application Programming Interface or, as they are more commonly known, APIs are making a storm in the software industry. They used to be the next best thing and now they are the current big thing. They come with the promise of data integration and business efficiency, but with simplicity.

In an Agile development organisation, you tend to have multiple teams working on discrete areas of the software. APIs also help here because they allow those teams to work with a minimised set of dependencies.

APIs are used in well-known business activities that many medium and large firms will use daily. These include marketing activities like website analytics which uses APIs to communicate with your website in order to receive and process your website analytics. This API helps you keep track of your website’s performance, helping with tracking marketing efforts and how many people are visiting your site and in which geographic region. APIs have made designing websites a lot easier and cheaper, as widgets and customer interaction tools do not have to be built from scratch any more as we can now use components from another area instead of building.

Another example is the ability to post a picture in Instagram but then have the option to share it on Facebook as well, as long as your accounts are linked via an API. Although this is a very simple example of how an API is used, it still shows how APIs can link systems together through integration and interaction.

Late-2018 we launched the 5Series API that allows you to easily take entity data and integrate into another application, automate data transfer, avoiding errors created by manual process and access data without needing to explore the complexities of the database.

In 5Series 4.94 we have enhanced our API to make it possible to use the API to make changes to your 5Series data as well as extract it, all while ensuring that data adheres to the strong 5Series data integrity, security and approval systems. The 5Series API helps with automation, helping our customers become more efficient and gain competitive advantage.

The 5Series API is built on open, industry standards that mean if you're used to working with any API, you'll be immediately familiar with our API. Indeed, we've made an example Registered Office application available on GitHub.

To learn more about 5Series APIs click here or contact us at info@trustquay.com