Chapter 7. Creating your schema model
- Understanding schema modeling basics
- Creating a RAML schema model
- Creating an OpenAPI schema model
At this point, you should have a good idea why you have an API and what it needs to accomplish to be successful. You have a business value as your foundation, metrics to support them, and use cases to make sure you can meet your customers’ needs and understand what you want your client developers to be able to do.
This chapter moves to the next stage—modeling the schema for your API and creating a design document that can be shared with other teams, customers, or executives. This document should help you find a development path that gives you the best chance to succeed with your API. This schema model is a contract between your organization and the clients who will be using it.
With a schema model, you can utilize design-driven development to ensure that the developed API matches the schema—and so meets your use cases. You can create a mock service that will allow customers or testers to create test clients against your eventual API before any code is written. You can use this schema model to run tests or create code for your API developers to use. The schema model is a powerful tool when creating successful, engaging, and irresistible APIs.