Proximity

From APIDesign

Revision as of 18:24, 8 May 2012

Often there is more than one type of "users" of an API. As 3SidesToEveryAPI explains, there is always at least the API author point of view and API user point of view. But from time to time there may be even more parties involved in design and consumption of some API. Depending on how closely related to the API specification and implementation those are, we can group them into API proximity categories.

The most distant group of users for the users of the ClientAPI - e.g. those that make calls into existing API objects, but those that don't implement them. In spite there are differences among this group as well, let's ignore them for now. Let's assume there is always much more users of an API and let's annotate them as N in the following paragraphs.

Zero to N

Some libraries, let's name them simple libraries, have just one implementation. The designer that defines what the API should do also implements it. Obviously, the proximity between the API and the provider of the implementation is almost zero - it is the same person or the same team.

Simple libraries are usually self contained. They combine the API specification together with the implementation. There is no reason, no way to plug into the library and change the way it behaves (for other clients of its API). Examples of such simple library include most of java.util package (with classes like ArrayList or Collections)), or other utility classes like Math class.

Of course, there may be some attempts to re-implement these simple libraries (like GNU Classpath or Harmony show), but those are usually licensing driven efforts, not purely technical ones.

Especially when the simple library is available as open source. It is much easier to contribute back than to fork. If there is some flaw in the library, it seems easier to create an API Patch and donate it back to the simple library owners. In general, there is little to no reason to re-implement simple library APIs.

1 to N

The simplest kind of library with a non-trivial proximity between the author of the API specification and author of the implementation is so-called vendor library. This kind of library is based on standardized specification. Usually multiple vendors with similar functionality sit down and agree on a specification. Each of them then provides their own different implementation. This was the case for EJB, JAX-RS, OSGi and possibly many others. On the other hand, it is almost always the case that there is only a single implementation of such specification in a running system.

The API for XML processing in Java (with entry points in DocumentBuilderFactory and SAXParserFactory) is one of the most well-known examples of a vendor library. Especially in the beginning of 21st century it was a common hobby among many programmers to write own implementation of an XML parser. Often the implementation was hidden behind the facade of SAX or DOM API. Such parsers also package their copy of the API (as providers of vendor library are supposed to do).

The close proximity of the vendor of the implementation and the API (as they are packaged together) leads to so called final interface design. This kind of design caused heavy nightmares as soon as the XML parsing API become part of JDK and as soon DOM2 was evolved into DOM3. These problems lead me to conclusion that final interface is a total anti-pattern (also expressed in chapter 7 of TheAPIBook) and we (me and others in the NetBeans project) invested a lot in inventing a better alternative. Other people however had different opinion and invested a bunch of energy to find out under which conditions final interface is an acceptable pattern.

After visiting OSGiCon in 2012 and having few chats with folks like Peter Kriens I can confirm I see the value of vendor library proximity now. I can understand OSGi better. I could almost say that OSGi has been designed to make final interface a good design pattern. However one has to keep in mind that this API design style works well only with One to Many (and possibly Few to Many) proximity. As soon as Many to Many proximity is needed, even OSGi needs to choose more flexible design.

M to N

In some cases one needs to have multiple different implementations of some API being used at once. These implementations are being written in distributed development environment, they may not be written against the same version of the library at all. The proximity between the API and the implementations is very weak. As a result trying to mimic the principles used while designing vendor library will not work and even semantic versioning may be too restricting.

In case of modular library the proximity of the API designer and the implementers is almost the same as the proximity of the API designer and the users of the API. This requires the API vendor to prepare evolution plan for both - the ClientAPI as well as ProviderAPI.

As my discussion at OSGiCon revealed, people facing this situation realize the difference between the Many to Many and One to Many and Few to Many cases. However, without having experience with the Many to Many case, they fallback to most obvious solution: Use of abstract classes (or these days interfaces with DefaultMethods). While extending abstract classes with new methods is definitely more compatible than extending interfaces, it can never be 100% safe. The safest solution is to separate API for clients and providers (taken to extreme, while demonstrating all benefits, in the extensible visitor case).

Weak proximity changes everything. An API designer can simplify its life by claiming all providers are close. However sometimes there is just no way around than to admit they are distant. Then the best thing to do is to accept the design style suitable for modular library.

TBD