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Glossary

Application programming interface (API)

Data and infrastructure

An API (application programming interface, the interface that lets one program talk to another) is the documented door through which two systems exchange data without a person retyping it.

An open interface turns a product into an ecosystem, because other developers add services the manufacturer never imagined. Its commercial weight shows through its absence: two systems that each work perfectly on their own hand the data over manually, and the manual hand-off is where the data starts to age.

An example

The digital storefront of a retail chain has to read stock levels from the warehouse system. With an interface between the two, the promise on screen holds all day; with a file exported every night, it holds until the first sell-out in the afternoon.

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