How do you monitor your APIs?

apiful.io

2 points·allthingsapi··6 comments

My APIs? The same way as I monitor my documentation or my implementation source code.

Is it me, or is it the programmers today can't tell the difference between service and specification?

Meanings drift over time. We can probably credit the terms 'REST API', 'HTTP API', and 'JSON API' for popularizing the usage of the term for 'web service', especially since that term went out of fashion in the mid-2000s.

What I don't understand what's simpler and clearer in "REST API" term over "REST service". The latter even reads shorter.

I do understand, however, that meanings drift. Mostly because undereducated and clueless people, unfortunately.

Eh, 'service' is an extremely overloaded term, so constructions like 'HTTP service' and 'JSON service' are ambiguous and awkward. I actually rather prefer the term 'API' used as a metonym [1] to describe the running instantiation of the 'actual' API, because the meaning is disambiguated by context.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy

We tend to use the term Web APIs to capture the space - we should have used that in the title to keep the discussion focused on the Monitoring topic!

> [...] because the meaning is disambiguated by context.

Until it's not disambiguated, especially that API and service implementing the API are in quite close domains and they will cause trouble in understanding. Really, no need to pollute our already difficult jargon with "API" meaning "service" ("API service", if you feel that "service" is overloaded).

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