Over 50% of the projects I consult on still generate OpenAPI (fka Swagger) from code, rather than the other way around. When I first begin working with any API development group as an advisor, strategist, or governance architect I always ask, “are you using OpenAPI?” Luckily the answer is almost always yes. The challenge is that most of the time they don’t understand the full scope of how to use OpenAPI, and are still opting for the more costly approach–writing code, then generating OpenAPI from annotations. It has been over five years since Jakub Nesetril of Apiary first decoupled this way of doing API design first, but, clearly, we still have a significant amount of work when it comes to API definition and design literacy amongst development groups.
When you study where API services and tooling are headed it is clear that API deployment and the actual writing of code is getting pushed further down in the life cycle. Services like Stoplight.io and Postman are focusing on enabling a design, mock, document, test, and iterate approach, with API definitions (OpenAPI, Postman, etc.) at the core. The actual deployment of an API, either using open source frameworks, API gateways, or another method, is coming into the picture more downstream. Progressive API teams are hammering out exactly the API they need to without ever writing any code, making sure the API design is dialed in before the more expensive, and often permanent code gets written and sent to production. https://goo.gl/Q778BS #DataIntegration #ML
