Conway's Law explains how organizational structure leads to fragmented system architectures, creating a need for a unified API layer.
The API First approach prioritizes designing and specifying the API contract before writing any implementation code.
Combining OpenAPI for API specification with a Git-based workflow in GitLab enables collaborative design and review across different teams.
The OpenAPI ecosystem offers many tools for code generation and validation, but requires careful selection to match specific frameworks and versions.
Large OpenAPI specifications can be made modular and maintainable by splitting them into multiple files for paths, schemas, and responses.
OpenAPI schemas can improve endpoint security by defining strict constraints on input data and creating custom API views to reduce the attack surface.
Without established guidelines, multiple teams will produce inconsistent API designs for things like URL paths, naming, and HTTP methods.
API Stylebook aggregates public API guidelines from various companies, providing a valuable resource for creating your own team-specific standards.
While OpenAPI is a powerful tool for collaborative API design, it has limitations such as a lack of schema inheritance and inconsistent tooling.
Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.