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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 — (Page 1 of 4)
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.

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