Comments on: 1.8 Make it Easy to Access http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/good-apis-jisc A JISC project looking at good practice for provision of and consuming APIs Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:46:10 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.2 By: Jo Walsh http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/good-apis-jisc/good-practice-for-provision-of-apis/18-make-it-easy-to-access/#comment-56 Jo Walsh Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:46:10 +0000 http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/good-apis-jisc/?page_id=133#comment-56 I appreciate these recommendations in theory – makes me think of posterous.com, where registration and contribution are handled through email; by the time you get to account creation and authentication, there is already usage established and an incentive to register oneself.

However… authorisation and authentication barriers are necessary for many of us to comply with copyright and license terms on the original source data behind web services run for UK HE/FE. In GeoCrossWalk’s case this has involved:

- Authentication with UK Federation
- Agreeing to several sets of license terms for access to Digimap services
- Registering from within Digimap for more detailed access to collections on the basis of institutional subscription, agreeing to more terms of use, waiting a business day
- Finally registering for an API key and agreeing to another set of terms of use!

We’re working on an open service using publicly available data so potential web service users can at least test out the API; but the quality and quantity of results will be very different.

Agreed that the Linked Data principle could use more development and illustration, outside this section…

]]> By: PeteJ http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/good-apis-jisc/good-practice-for-provision-of-apis/18-make-it-easy-to-access/#comment-35 PeteJ Mon, 18 May 2009 10:21:55 +0000 http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/good-apis-jisc/?page_id=133#comment-35 That should say “authorisation” :-)

]]> By: PeteJ http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/good-apis-jisc/good-practice-for-provision-of-apis/18-make-it-easy-to-access/#comment-34 PeteJ Mon, 18 May 2009 10:21:30 +0000 http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/good-apis-jisc/?page_id=133#comment-34 Is this section about authentiation/suthorisation? If so, “make sure you support Linked Data” seems out of place here?

Also while, I think it is a very welcome recommendation, it carries with it a set of implications that carry across many other parts of the document, so needs to be established as a more general design principle, rather than a passing mention.

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