IoT Is Eating the World: APIs and REST
Considering that 80 percent of devices will be IoT devices, IoT has the greatest potential to advance society — a world where all kinds of devices are interconnected and smart, communicating and improving our quality of life. But why is it that IoT still feels shallow, consumeristic, and only focused on “1st world” gadgets that are more of a nice to have? Just as software has transformed industries, I now believe that IoT is eating the world through data-spouting devices connected to the Internet. Here, everything gets connected. We are currently in a growth spurt: the migration of analog functions monitoring and managing the physical world to digital functions involving communications and software.
With IoT, we are basically exposing a new platform. Here’s an analogy: before smartphones, regular phones had sensors, speakers, mics, and GPS — yet no one did anything but speak. Then, we put an operating system on top of the same hardware. Now the hardware functionality is exposed as a set of APIs where devs can do what they want. We exposed a new platform, and IoT is doing the same thing.
An API is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications; it specifies how software components should interact. APIs are tightly linked with IoT because they allow you to securely expose connected devices to customers, go-to-market channels, and other applications in your IT infrastructure. Because APIs connect important “things,” like cars, medical devices, smart grids, and thermostats, to your ecosystem, it’s critical to deploy API management that is flexible, scalable, and secure.
APIs provide the ability to glue and integrate services, leaving devs to focus on application interaction vs. the applications themselves. APIs allow developers to build context-based applications that can interact with the physical world, instead of purely through UI (proximity and location-aware). To truly achieve IoT, we need a REST API for every device. REST allows data to flow over Internet protocols and to delegate and manage authorization.
APIs can be external services requiring a “key” for use, or they can be 100 percent free and publicly available, not requiring registration with the originating entity. With the help of APIs, a single app can utilize software written with multiple programming languages — thanks to a unified architectural style called REST. IoT means we’re building more apps, so no matter where you go in the IoT, you’re bound to need RESTful services.
Unstructured data goes to object storage, semi-structure goes to MongoDB, Cassandra, traditional, and transactional data goes to SQL, MySQL, and so on. As a developer, it’s challenging to deal with proprietary APIs exposed by these data sources. To integrate one unstructured, one semi-structured, and one structured database in your app, you have to deal with at least three proprietary APIs. This doesn’t make you as productive, and the code is more prone to errors because you are mixing and matching highly heterogeneous APIs into your applications.
No lane dividers, signals or crosswalks before the Industrial Revolution.
Imagine driving through dense city traffic using roads without any lane dividers, crosswalks, or signals. It would be utter chaos. That is the reality of the current state of the IoT. There is a lack of holistic information design. We must standardize the flow of information to allow true machine-to-machine connectivity to arise, and thankfully, this can be achieved using APIs — REST APIs to be specific. Populating urban environments with innovative machine-to-machine connections is the future of the IoT.
When plotting connections within the IoT, nodes are devices and arcs are APIs. Indeed, to fully realize the benefits IoT has to offer, OT assets will need to be designed with web technologies built directly into them, such as HTTP for interaction, SSL/ TLS encryption and authentication for data security, and JSON for data format.
