MuleSoft Advances State of the Art for API Design With New Tooling for RAML

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 23, 2013) - MuleSoft, provider of the world's most widely used integration platform, today released developer tooling for RAML (RESTful API Modeling Language), a concise, expressive language for specifying APIs. By offering the tooling as a free service available on APIhub as well as an open source download at RAML.org, MuleSoft enables any developer to build REST APIs that foster a standard, design-first approach. RAML contributors include: Miško Hevery, AngularJS project founder; Kin Lane, Presidential Innovation Fellow; Bill Scott, UX thought leader; and Uri Sarid, CTO.

"APIs are taking over the world. However, chaos and confusion are still prevalent without design standards for consistency and reuse. This leads to huge variability in quality, friction for the developers and wildly uncertain API initiatives for enterprises," said Uri Sarid, CTO at MuleSoft. "We believe that an open, simple and succinct spec for describing APIs, that captures their structure and fosters pattern-based design and reuse, will help unlock the potential of the API economy. RAML is the right candidate to do exactly that and we see the potential for it to garner broad adoption -- even now we're seeing others in the ecosystem rallying around RAML."

Design Compelling APIs with New MuleSoft Tooling
RAML is the first standard facilitating the design-first approach to APIs. The language captures the simplicity of HTTP -- the basis for the Web -- and is programming language agnostic. MuleSoft's tools expose the underlying value of RAML throughout the entire lifecycle of an API, from designing and building to evaluating and integrating. Released today, the new MuleSoft tooling includes:

• API Designer: a modern, web-based, intuitive development tool that guides you through the API design process with RAML and builds a live, visual representation of your API on the fly.
  • API providers can use the API Designer to easily create their API in a human-readable, easily consumable format, and then socialize that API definition with key stakeholders. Iteration is rapid -- editing a RAML spec takes only minutes -- and supports the API provider in creating an easy-to-use, developer-friendly API.
• API Console: a graphical representation of a RAML-documented API that visually exposes API structure and important patterns while providing access to static and interactive API documentation.
  • Both during and after the API design process, an API consumer can quickly and easily evaluate a RAML-documented API using the console, gaining a robust understanding of how the API actually behaves.
• API Notebook: live, web-based, persistent JavaScript console that helps developers explore and live test APIs, mashups, and use cases in the browser and save them for later.
  • The API Notebook consumes RAML specs and produces a guided, object-oriented, in-browser JavaScript development experience which a developer would use to test real use-cases, build out proof-of-concept API mashups, and create shareable examples.

To download the free tooling or contribute code and get involved, visit RAML.org. RAML tooling is also available as a free service on APIhub, the most comprehensive public repository and richest community for APIs: http://www.apihub.com/raml-tools.

Connect with MuleSoft CTO Uri Sarid, RAML Core Team Member
Uri Sarid will be speaking at the HTML5 Developer Conference, October 22-23, 2013 in San Francisco, CA; All Things Open, October 23-24, 2013 in Raleigh, NC; API Strategy & Practice Conference, October 23-25, 2013 in San Francisco, CA; and Defrag, November 4-6, 2013 in Broomfield, CO.

Supporting Quotes
"Developers want tools that are clean with minimal design and a joy to use. That's how the AngularJS framework gained so much traction -- it makes development fun. RAML is clearly built on the same principles, targeted at the API ecosystem," said Miško Hevery, AngularJS project founder. "As more and more APIs are described by RAML, API design improves and becomes more consistent. Good API design helps developers maximize productivity and flexibility, eliminating the need for developers to waste countless hours struggling to consume RESTful APIs."

"Good API design has a huge impact for organizations. When I was at Netflix I observed firsthand how our APIs became a key to success with device partners and to our TV and mobile experiences. What I love about the RAML tooling is how it makes an API visible and sharable. It really makes the structure and patterns of APIs reusable, encouraging consistency," said Bill Scott, Sr. Director, UI Engineering at PayPal. "When an API is built to be fully embraced and utilized by developers, everybody benefits. It drives faster and broader adoption and the code that it's built on is actually more robust, which means everyone spends less time worrying about the API and more time creating value from it."

According to results from Forrester Research, Inc.'s June 2013 report by Randy Heffner, Establish Your API Design Strategy, "the central goal of an API design strategy is to ensure, for each API, that the right design questions are considered and the most appropriate best practices applied to meet today's needs and pave a path to the API's future. A design strategy consists of a structured sequence of questions to establish each API's design context and then successively narrow and focus the API's design."

About MuleSoft
MuleSoft provides the most widely used integration platform to connect any application, data service or API, across the cloud and on-premise continuum. As SaaS, mobile and Big Data converge, enterprises face a choice: become overwhelmed by the resulting explosion of endpoints or seize the opportunity to gain competitive advantage. Companies can no longer compete with just the assets, technology and talent within their four walls. In the era of the New Enterprise, companies must combine an explosion of applications, data, partners and customers into a single, high performing entity. Founded on the idea that connecting applications should not be hard, MuleSoft helps organizations harness the power of their applications through integration. Delivered as a packaged integration experience that eliminates costly point-to-point code, MuleSoft's Anypoint Platform combines Mule ESB, CloudHub and Anypoint Connectors with capabilities for API creation, publishing and management. Supporting billions of transactions per day, MuleSoft is used in production by global leaders in major industry verticals, including MasterCard, Nokia, Nestlé and Honeywell, and powers integrations with leading SaaS vendors such as salesforce.com, NetSuite, Workday, Intuit and Box.

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