Process
Our structured, end-to-end process from Enterprise Architecture to API design
Enterprise Architecture and APIs
Enterprise Architecture and API development are hard to align. Enterprise Architecture uses relational metadata while APIs rely on hierarchical metadata for their message definitions.
Governing Metadata
EC-API-Design bridges the gap between Enterprise Architecture and API development by governing the metadata for both. Through four layers, EC-API-Design enforces that Enterprise Architecture metadata is used in API metadata.
Four layer approach
The first layer models Enterprise Architecture metadata as relational data models. Next, hierarchical data models are derived from the relational data models. Message models are created as subsets of these hierarchical data models. Finally, API contract models use the message models as input, output, and fault messages. These API contract models can be exported to any API contract standard, including OpenAPI, WSDL, AsyncAPI, and RAML.
EC-API-Design in action
Shown here is a relational data model editor, specifically the relation table for editing relations between entities