What is an API?: Automating data flow

At some point during an average working day, you will probably have to take data from one place and put it in another. Maybe you’ve got a report from somewhere else on campus in PDF format that has important figures you need to put into a spreadsheet, or into a Word report.

Depending on where the data is and where it needs to get to, there will be more or less painful ways to move that data. Maybe one application can export it as a CSV file, and you need to import it into a spreadsheet. If nothing like that is available, you might perhaps be left with copying and pasting, because that method works between most applications. Sometimes you might even be reduced to retyping the data. If you need to be selective with the data or reformat it in some way, this can be time consuming and tedious. And all of this effort is multiplied when data needs to be collected repeatedly over a long time!

The reason for these difficulties is that the applications you normally work with are designed to be used by humans, so that if data needs to be transferred from one application to another, people have to do the work. But, increasingly, applications are being created which offer an alternative way to move data in and out of them, a way that can be automated, lifting some of the burden off people. An API is a way for programs or applications to talk to each other, doing some of the things that people do in working with an application.

Chris Gray will present this talk, which will be accessible to non-technical staff, and designed to illustrate why all staff should be aware of the opportunities APIs present for getting data in and out of applications.