Chapter 1, The Business Value of APIs – this chapter gives context to the rest of the book by elaborating on what APIs mean to a business and why they should be embraced. It also talks about business drivers for APIs and how to determine their value based on an API value chain.
Chapter 2, The Evolution of API Platforms – this chapter takes a step back to look in detail at how technologies and platforms have evolved from traditional middleware and enterprise service bus-centric SOA architectures to fully federated, multi-cloud, and microservices-based architectures that enable APIs to exist and be managed wherever information resides.
Chapter 3, Business-Led API Strategy – the main focus of this chapter is to deliver a comprehensive approach to defining API strategies that have clear, concise, and business-centric goals and objectives.
Chapter 4, API-Led Architectures – this chapter walks through a reference architecture and all of the capabilities required to implement modern APIs and fully decouple (micro)services. The chapter is a great reference for what modern stacks should look like.
Chapter 5, API-Led Architecture Patterns – this chapter extends Chapter 4 by walking through how the different capabilities described in the reference architecture can be combined in order to deliver sound solutions to common problems.
Chapter 6, Modern API Architectural Styles – this chapter gives a detailed overview of the trendiest API architectural styles (at the time this book was written). The chapter is a great source of inspiration for anyone looking for a point of view on different API styles and their pros and cons.
Chapter 7, API Life Cycle – this chapter walks through the full API life cycle and also related ones, such as the service and API consumer life cycles. The chapter is a great reference for those wishing to implement end-to-end API processes and tools from scratch or anyone looking for inspiration on how to enhance existing ones.
Chapter 8, API Products' Target Operating Model – as the name suggests, the chapter walks through what it really means to treat APIs as products and the implications this has for organizations. From core concepts to different operating models with their pros and cons, this chapter elaborates on a topic that is rarely discussed in the world of APIs.