Programmable Web is now tracking 1000 APIs in it’s directory. That’s quite an achievement. The blog post specifically points to a number of APIs considered disruptive, including APIs from ebay, Amazon (including Amazon Web Services), Google Maps API, Twitter, etc. Recent APIs like the ones from the New York times only point to the importance of allowing people to use data or functionality from one source in all kinds of new contexts.
Programmable Web tracks a few life science APIs (under the Medical category)
It’s a small number and missing some for sure. What I see missing are APIs from Nature, Elsevier, PLoS, etc. Also missing are APIs to tools, not just data sources. Wonder why not?
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4 Comments
One of the big problem with the web services in bioinformatics is the semantics of inputs/outputs for the various algorithms encapsulated by the APIs. Having experience with trying to synthesize workflows with such web services, I found the most difficult part having to read the docs in order to know what to plug where in my designs. Again it's all about the non-conformity of biology, but the point I want to make is in regards of the need for Semantic Web Services in bio-it, in order to alleviate these kind of issues….
The problem with a lot of life science APIs is non-standard (in the web context) data transfer. Plus most aren't RESTful.
One of the big problem with the web services in bioinformatics is the semantics of inputs/outputs for the various algorithms encapsulated by the APIs. Having experience with trying to synthesize workflows with such web services, I found the most difficult part having to read the docs in order to know what to plug where in my designs. Again it's all about the non-conformity of biology, but the point I want to make is in regards of the need for Semantic Web Services in bio-it, in order to alleviate these kind of issues….
The problem with a lot of life science APIs is non-standard (in the web context) data transfer. Plus most aren't RESTful.
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[...] November 10, 2008 — Richard Web as platform: Where are the biomedical APIs?: [Via business|bytes|genes|molecules] Programmable Web is now tracking 1000 APIs in it’s [...]
[...] API, something which is more or less standard for the consumer web data services but which is badly missing on the research web. None of this is actually terribly difficult and there are good tools out there to do [...]