InfoQ recently released a video from the APIDays conference that took place in Paris last year. I talked about scaling an Open API based web API using Cloud Endpoints, on the Google Cloud platform.

I spoke about the topic a few times, as web APIs is a topic I enjoy, at Nordic APIs, at APIDays, or Devoxx. But it’s great to see the video online. So let me share the slide deck along with the video:

The JAX conference, in Mainz, Germany, is coming to an end. I was there with my colleagues Mete and Robert, and had the chance to cover two topics: Machine Learning and Scaling Web APIs. It’s a pleasure to come back to this conference where the audience is always very focused, eager to learn, and is engaging in great and interesting conversations.

Machine Intelligence at Google Scale

My first presentation was about Machine Learning, and in particular with the Google Cloud APIs, including Vision, Speech, Natural Language, Translate, and Video Intelligence. Although I’m not an expert in TensorFlow and the Cloud Machine Learning Engine, I got a chance to say a few words about these. I guess I’ll have to play with both at some point to be able to tell even more!

I had the pleasure of presenting at the Nordic APIs Platform Summit 2016 in Stockholm this week. I enjoyed the conference a lot, with great speakers and content, flawless organization, and nice interactions with the audience.

For the last keynote of the conference, I had the chance to present about Google Cloud Endpoints, Google’s take on API management. I worked on a little “pancake”-powered demo, deploying a Ratpack application, in a Docker container, on Google Container Engine. I created an OpenAPI Specification describing my Web API that served pancakes. And used the Extensible Service Proxy to receive the API calls for securing (with an API key), monitoring (through the Cloud Console) and scaling my Web API (thanks to the scaling capabilities of Container Engine). This demo will be the topic of some upcoming blog posts.

The most common API definition languages we spot in the wild are Swagger / OpenAPI Spec, RAML and API Blueprint. All three let you define your endpoints, your resources, your query or path parameters, your headers, status codes, security schemes, and more.

In a nutshell, these definition languages define the structure of your API, and allow you to describe many elements. As standards in the API industry evolve, however, their purpose and design are under continuous scrutiny. Specifically, the extensibility of API specifications with additional elements and feature sets comes into question.