I’ve encouraged all of my portfolio companies that have an online service to supply both REST and SOAP API’s to their web services. This week, both Rally Software and NewsGator released REST implementations of their API.
NewsGator’s API is a public one and has been gradually expanding is scope and documentation. It has been exercised extremely well since both FeedDemon 2.0, NetNewsWire 2.1 Beta, and the NewsGator Private Label solutions are using it extensively to connect with NewsGator Online. The SOAP implementation has been around since August, but a number of people have requested the REST API which is now out.
Rally’s API is limited to customers, but you can get a look at it by signing up for a test drive.
NewsGator and Rally’s REST API’s join FeedBurner’s API’s which has been out for a while. I remember when SDK’s were the thing ISV’s focused on – if you wanted widespread adoption of your product, you built an SDK to make it easier to integrate with other applications (Microsoft is the master of this.) Obviously, API’s are the SDK’s of the online world and it’s fun to get some REST from several of my portfolio companies.