---
layout: post
title: There Is A Big Opportunity Right Now When It Comes To API Design Tooling
image: https://s3.amazonaws.com/kinlane-productions2/api-evangelist-logos/api-evangelist-butterfly-vertical.png
author:
  name: kinlane
tags:
  - Design
  - Tooling
---
[API design and definitions are the number one area when it comes to talks submitted for APIStrat 2015 in Austin](http://austin2015.apistrat.com/2015/09/14/api-design-iot-and-microservices-dominate-the-talk-submissions-for-apistrat-austin-2015/), and when it comes to traffic across the API Evangelist network in 2015. [After diving into the Amazon API Gateway a little more over the weekend](http://apievangelist.com/2015/09/11/some-potentially-very-powerful-api-orchestration-with-the-amazon-api-gateway/), I was reminded of the opportunity out there when it comes to API design tooling.

Amazon did a good job, providing a GUI interface for crafting the methods, resources, and underlying data models for APIs you are deploying using the gateway. However when you [compare to some of the GUI API design editors I mentioned in my last post on this subject, from Restlet, APIMATIC, and Gelato](http://apievangelist.com/2015/08/13/a-common-open-source-api-design-editor-is-needed-for-api-service-providers/), the Amazon interface clearly needs evolve a little more.

AWS is just getting started with their solution, so I'm not knocking what they have done. I just wanted to keep comparing of all of the solutions as they emerge, and highlight the opportunity for some standardization in this layer of API tooling. I see a pretty big opportunity for some player to step up and provide an open source API design editor that provides a seamless experience across API service providers. 

This post is nothing new. I am just trumpeting the call for open API design tooling each time I see another new interface introduced for crafting APIs, their paths, resources, parameters, headers, authentication, and underlying data models. At some point, a new player will emerge with [the open source API design editor I am looking for](http://apievangelist.com/2014/06/25/if-i-could-design-my-perfect-api-design-editor/), or one of the existing players open sources their current offering, and evolve it in context of the wider API design space, [providing an abstracted layer that supports all API definition formats](http://apievangelist.com/2015/08/28/we-need-an-open-abstraction-layer-to-help-us-better-define-and-design-our-apis/).

With the growth in the number of service providers I see stepping up to server the API space, the need for common, open tooling when it comes to API design is only going to grow. [It took almost four years of waiting for the API management space to figure this out](http://apievangelist.com/2014/10/05/taking-a-fresh-look-at-what-open-source-api-management-architecture-is-available/), I'm hoping I don't have to wait as long in the API design side of things.