What? Another Three Letter Acronym!

XSL, ASP, ISP, SQL, POP, PHP...... Don't they drive you crazy?! They do me. I constantly hear them thrown around the office in all kinds of situations. Here is another, API. What in the heck does this one mean? Well, API is one of the few I do know. API stands for Application Programming Interface. Wikipedia defines API as "a source code interface that an operating system or library provides to support requests for services to be made of it by computer programs." Wow! Isn't that a mouthful? Well to break it down, API is essentially a software program that takes a request (usually sent from an external software program), processes information, and returns a result. A good example of this is the rate calculator available through USPS. When a customer is ordering a product online and wants the item shipped, the rate calculator API can be used. The e-commerce system electronically sends the "API" the shipping address and the total weight of the order using XML (another three letter acronym for Extensible Markup Language). Then the API takes the given information, calculates the different rates, and returns a response, also using XML, back to the e-commerce system. From there, the e-commerce system interprets the information, decides what shipping type was chosen, and displays the total shipping. APIs are used for several different things. PayPal, Google Maps, and YouTube are just a few of the unlimited number of websites that offer an API. So the next time you are around the office and hear a bunch of three letter acronyms floating around, ask your co-workers what an API is, so you can be the smart one for that moment.