In an article earlier this week, author David Linthicum wrote, The Web API Expert: The Emerging ProgrammableWeb API. In his article, David suggests that the ProgrammableWeb API can be used as a type of WSDL or UDDI service.
In the article David, in reference to the ProgrammableWeb API says:
Now I have something to show you that lives up to that hype, in essence a layer of technology, on-demand, that lives between the API provider and the API consumer, which is an API itself.
The problem is, this is entirely untrue. The web service API available from ProgrammableWeb is nothing more than a listing of services that have been registered. It can't be used in any reasonable way from any current programming language, other than if you want to create a web site that does something like list web services.
The problem with web services is still that they aren't very discoverable, and you have no guarantees as to availability. Digging into David's thoughts on the ProgrammableWeb API only further illustrate the point. The data you do get back from the API only allows you to see what the basic function is as well as how other people rate it.
What we really need in addition to the what is the how as well as availability metrics. ProgrammableWeb should consider integrating Pingdom monitoring for services as well as a meta description of API's (like a WSDL) for developers to use. This type of application would not only allow developers to make better decisions about which API's they choose to integrate with, but provide a consistent interface to those API's.
