Data Decay and the Illusion of the Present

By Dan Lynn @ API Strategy & Practice Conference
San Francisco, October 23-24-25, 2013

Transcript

1. Data Decay and the Illusion of the Present Dan Lynn @danklynn
2. Keeps all your contacts in one place and keeps them automatically up to date. Based in Denver, Colorado CTO & Co-Founder dan@fullcontact.com @danklynn
3. Let’s talk about time.
5. The Past
6. http://wearcam.org/dundas-square/2004sep23/cement.jpg
7. The Future The Past The Present
8. Unless you’re a yogi, you probably can’t even perceive the present.
9. http://applemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ exc.jpeg
10. - Washington Post (September 24, 2013) “Traders may have gotten last week’s Fed news 7 milliseconds early“
11. It’s just a question of how old. Data is always old
12. How do APIs keep data fresh?
13. Polling • Simple • But can lead to complex scheduling • Trades efficient use of resources for fresh data. GET /notifications?since=1382630675166
14. - Zapier “98.5% of polls are wasted”
15. Ping/Pull • XML-RPC • Facebook Realtime updates • Avoids scheduled polling • Consumer must host an endpoint • Moderate latency (3 hops) • Complex
16. Push • Github service hooks • Content of change is pushed • Payload can be diff or full resource • Consumer must host an endpoint • Lowest latency (1 hop)
17. We are moving towards a push-based API ecosystem
18. “Security is abnormally slow.” Flight Delays
19. “Dan Lynn changed his phone number” Contact Information
20. Dynamic Subscriptions POST /contacts/123/subscriptions { "url" : "https://.../updates?contactId=123" } 201 Created { "url" : "/contacts/123/subscriptions/a3b"}
21. Dynamic Subscriptions DELETE /contacts/123/subscriptions/a3b 200 OK
22. So which model is right for your API?
23. What’s the cost of acting on wrong data?
24. $100 per contact Source: SiriusDecisions If left untreated
25. Low time sensitivity? Polling is fine.
26. High time sensitivity? Go with push.
27. APIs are combating information asymmetry.
28. Thanks! @danklynn See Also: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0060.html https://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/ http://www.resthooks.org/