Advantages and challenges of building a RESTful API
There are a few advantages, as well as common challenges, when it comes to building RESTful APIs. These advantages and challenges will be explained in detail in the following subsections.
Advantages
The RESTful API style offers significant advantages compared to other styles. Hence, when it comes to building API-based enterprise applications, the REST standard is the most preferred specification in the IT industry.
The main benefits are as follows:
- Scalability: This is the most important quality when you're adopting the REST standard. Owing to the separation between the client and the server, the development teams can plan to scale up/out the REST APIs, independent of how the clients will consume it. This concept of separation of concerns, coupled with stateless design, facilitates the development of APIs that are modular in nature. Each of the APIs can be scaled independently, as per requirements...