Desirable qualities in an Abstract API
Maximal convenience for applications developers
- Abstract API is intuitive for learning and use
- Abstract APIs often need redundant access methods, for the convenience of programmers
- Processing tasks common to all applications (beyond parsing and validation) are supported by the implementation of the abstract API.
- Abstract API should include both:
- Properties directly derivable from syntactic structure of interchange form.
- Properties implicit in architecture but not reflected in syntactic structures.
Neutrality
- no hidden assumptions about platform, vendor or application.
Self-description
- API is intelligible, well-documented