With APIs and Software Libraries, How Much Code Is Needed to Create Something Immensely Useful? Not Much…

August 9, 2018 Kevin Farnham API Monitoring, API Science API, Integrations, JSON, Performance, Reporting, Teams

Your business likely requires customized views of the data that is core to the creation of your product. Decades ago, accomplishing this involved development of large data analysis software libraries that were customized to a company’s particular needs, along with user interfaces that enabled employees to view the data, so they could respond to anomalies.

Much has changed in recent decades. Data analysis code that had to be custom-developed decades ago is now available in software libraries such as Python’s NumPy and SciPy. Similarly, modern data display libraries available, for example, Matplotlib. This code is well tested and verified by a large user community. By utilizing these libraries, developers can simply call verified functions, rather than developing new custom code.

Meanwhile, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) have immensely simplified the programming effort required to access large amounts of important data. In particular, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) facilitates downloading data from APIs in a format that is easily ingested by most modern programming languages that are suited to data analysis, for example, Java and Python…

How to Use MatPlotLib to Display API Performance Data

June 13, 2018July 9, 2018 Kevin Farnham API Monitoring, API Science API, Integrations, JSON, Performance, Reporting, Teams

In my previous two posts, I illustrated how your team can Use cron and curl to Regularly Download API Performance Data and How to Use Python to Extract API Performance Data. In this post, I illustrate how you can use the Python MatPlotLib library to create plots of the downloaded data that will be of […]

How to Use Python to Extract JSON API Performance Data

June 6, 2018June 13, 2018 Kevin Farnham API Monitoring, API Science API, Integrations, JSON, Performance, Reporting

In my last post, I described How to Use cron and curl to Regularly Download API Performance Data. This is the first step toward creating a view of API performance data that is customized for your company’s needs. Once you have the raw data, you can use your company’s preferred programming languages and the custom […]

How to Use cron and curl to Regularly Download API Performance Data

May 30, 2018June 6, 2018 Kevin Farnham API Monitoring, API Science API, JSON, Performance, Reporting, Teams

API performance is critical for modern applications. People use their phones and tablets to immediately access information that is relevant to what they’re doing or thinking about right now. If your company’s objective is to provide this information, then you need to know how your product appears to your customers. If your product relies on […]

How to Use Your API Science One-Month Free Trial (Part 3)

May 21, 2018May 30, 2018 Kevin Farnham Alert Rules, API Monitoring, Getting Started, Performance, Reporting, Teams

When you’ve created and configured your first API Science monitor, you’ll want to configure automated notifications to your team when something involving a critical external or internal API goes awry. You’ll also want to study the performance of your critical APIs using API Science reports. Configuring API Monitor Notifications While your customers access your product […]

British Army Utilizes APIs for Increased Logistic Efficiency

April 17, 2018May 2, 2018 Kevin Farnham API Best Practices, Integrations, Reporting, Security

Large organizations that have existed for centuries have employed computer technology since its innovation. 50 years ago, large-scale organizations contracted developers to utilize 1960s software and hardware technology to create systems that advantageously advanced the accomplishment of their missions. In subsequent decades, this software was tuned for evolving situations. Along the way, errors identified in […]

Utilizing the API Science Platform to Maximize Uptime for Your Customers

January 22, 2018January 31, 2018 Kevin Farnham API Monitoring, API Science API, Getting Started, Performance, Reporting

So, you’ve invented a great new product that everyone who has a smartphone or tablet can access. Your product’s uniqueness is embedded in your internal software, but you also rely on data accessed from external APIs. Your software includes internal APIs utilized by the product you present to your customers as they interact with your […]

Creating Custom Consoles Using API Monitor Data

December 18, 2017January 15, 2018 Kevin Farnham API Monitoring, API Science API, Integrations, JavaScript, Reporting

My last post illustrated how you can access API monitor data and display it on a web page. The demonstration software in that post calls the API Science API and displays the response text on a web page. The response from a call to the API Science API is a JSON formatted string, for example: […]

Using JavaScript and JQuery to Access API Monitor Data

September 3, 2017September 18, 2017 Kevin Farnham API Monitoring, API Science API, JavaScript, Reporting

The API Science API provides the capability for your custom software to access information about your API monitors. In this post, I provide an example of how you can create a web page that utilizes JQuery and custom JavaScript to bring data about a specific API monitor into a browser’s Document Object Model (DOM). Once […]

Introduction: Javascript and Custom API Dashboards

August 22, 2017September 3, 2017 Kevin Farnham API Monitoring, API Science API, Integrations, JavaScript, Reporting

Javascript provides the capability for a company whose product is based on APIs to create custom dashboards that show their team the current status of the APIs that are critical for their product. If certain APIs are down, then their product is either down or partially down from the point of view of their customers. […]