Developers Finding Gold at End of the Application

Corporate developers are using open APIsto access Amazon, eBay sites to helpcreate new market opportunities

By Shari L. Gould

June 15, 2004 —

The online business of buying and selling is changing.

Web services have expanded the sales channels for companies that consider Internet retailing a strategy for success-so long as they're willing to adopt a philosophy of openness. Companies such as Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. aim to help their customers increase sales through the Amazon and eBay Web sites by providing access to their APIs using standards such as XML-over-HTTP and SOAP.

"A certain level of openness is required…. You're more successful the more transparent you are," said Jeffrey McManus, senior manager for platform evangelism at eBay.

Both eBay and Amazon.com provide access to their Web services catalogs and APIs through their respective developer programs. This allows their client companies to efficiently conduct business on Amazon.com or eBay.com by developing Web services-based applications that integrate with Amazon's or eBay's back-end systems.

McManus said eBay offers "multiple on-ramps for Web services" that enable developers to access eBay's "Sandbox" test environment, via XML-over-HTTP, SOAP, traditional XML and, for Windows developers, a .NET wrapper.

"We decided to implement both (XML-over-HTTP and SOAP) and let the developers decide," said Jeff Barr, Amazon.com's technical program manager for Amazon Web services.

Barr estimated that 80 percent of developers in Amazon's community chose XML-over-HTTP to access Amazon.com's Web services, which include catalog information, product lists, the ability to make purchases and use of the shopping cart.

Whether to use XML-over-HTTP or SOAP is left to the discretion of the developer, Barr said. "The former works very well for string-oriented scripting languages such as PHP, Perl and Python. SOAP is often attractive to the devotees of strongly typed languages such as Java and C++."

DEVELOPING WEB SERVICES APPS
Offering generalized tips for developing applications that utilize Web services is challenging, said eBay's McManus, because every application is unique, using different languages and platforms.

Therefore, McManus offered just one tip for developers: Consider the taxonomy of a product's XML data and how products are categorized on eBay. For example, do not make an XML call for a list of products-which may be a 7MB document-more than once a day.

Barr offered Amazon.com customers some advice when it comes to developing applications for Web services.

Do not implement every Web services standard, he said, adding that companies should listen to their developers. Standards often are available before developers are ready to use them, and some may not apply for a particular organization's Web services strategy.

GETTING ON BOARD
Barr said Amazon.com has found a new class of customer in developers. The company has exposed its entire catalog to some 50,000 developers that have participated in its developer program since its inception in July 2002.

Key to success in implementing Web services, he explained, is making developer access to Web services part of the business model. As such, Amazon.com implements two business models: one for customers that sell on Amazon.com called the Marketplace Seller Model; and the Amazon Associate Model, where more detailed information can be retrieved dynamically via Web services. Note, however, that developers do not have to be an Amazon Associate to participate in the Web services program, Barr said. But Amazon.com customers that participate in both programs can earn referral fees for sales.

To use the Marketplace Seller Model, developers for companies selling on Amazon.com simply make a Web services call to an Amazon.com service via a search by some filtering parameter, such as by title, author or publication.

Developers that use the Amazon Associate Model for business use Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) to format outgoing data from the Amazon.com server. They can categorize data to create and populate a Web site using an XSLT stylesheet and the XML response retrieved from Amazon.com. They can retrieve Amazon.com data without coding and formatting by using a URL that represents their company's service, then specifying another XSLT transformation file. No server-side code is required, only a link and a stylesheet.

Regardless of the Amazon.com business model customers use, the data is returned in two ways: either in a summary format called the Light Data Model, or in a more detailed format called the Heavy Data Model. The Light Data Model returns a basic product list. The Heavy Data Model returns detailed data such as information about other sellers, product descriptions, customer reviews and specific tracks on various compact discs.

For eBay, exposing the company's APIs via Web services and making them available to its clients' developers adds a dynamic element to the eBay platform and the way business is conducted, McManus said. eBay.com's traditional community of buyers and sellers now extends to include developers. McManus called the inclusion of developers "key to managing the pace of change." The platform is updated every two weeks.

McManus said the company opened its Sandbox testing program to 2,000 third-party technology providers to integrate their Web services-based applications with eBay.com. The program began just prior to eBay's acquisition of Pay Pal, and has 500 live applications that use eBay's APIs. It allows developers to access, develop, deploy and test Web services in eBay's test environment. Developers then undergo a question-and-answer session and certification process to ensure their applications meet the required standards to go live on eBay.

Greg Isaacs, senior manager for partner programs and market development at eBay, said, "As part of eBay's Developers Program, we expose these APIs to our growing developer community to allow them to interact with the eBay Marketplace and help us innovate on our platform."

THE SAP CONNECTION
eBay's Web services extend to SAP customers with SAP's development of an application that provides software connectivity from its SAP R/3 and mySAP CRM customers into eBay's platform. Yet to be named, SAP's eBay integration application should be released around October.

According to eBay's Isaacs, a likely use case is an enterprise that has excess inventory or idle assets and is looking to receive a better return on these assets relative to liquidation. "In order to leverage their embedded SAP infrastructure, the customer would purchase the appropriate SAP application, which would allow the customer to sell these assets on eBay.com.

The SAP application would help manage the entire process of the eBay selling life cycle from listing the item to managing the checkout," Isaacs explained.

"This is important as thousands of companies rely on SAP to manage their business processes/infrastructure, and we want customers to use eBay in an efficient way by not having to drastically change their current business practices," he added.

SAP is using eBay's Web services APIs to accomplish this integration. For example, to place an item for sale on eBay.com, SAP is using eBay's AddItem API call. eBay has more than 60 API calls that replicate a large majority of eBay's site functionality, Isaacs claimed.

Another example is checking the status of items placed on eBay.com-such as which items have bids on them and which items have closed successfully. SAP can make an API call to pull this information from the eBay platform.

"These are just two basic examples of how SAP is using our APIs, but you can see the possibility of a customer using the eBay Marketplace through SAP's software without the need to ever go directly to eBay.com's Web site," Isaacs said.

SECURING THE SCENE
Exposing APIs to developers to expedite buying and selling over the Internet brings with it concerns over security. However, both eBay.com and Amazon.com have what they called failsafe procedures in place and deem security risks minimal.

Barr said Amazon.com always takes security seriously, but "the opportunities for mischief are pretty limited."

Similarly, eBay's McManus said, "Security is a commitment for eBay, particularly when money changes hands." McManus credits the interfaces in place, namely SOAP, for minimizing security risks. "It just doesn't add up. You can't attack through a SOAP interface."

eBay's Trust and Safety Group serves as a watchdog for the company and its Web services customers. McManus said it's unlikely for "fraudsters to go through those hoops."

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