Survey on API Change Drivers and Evolution (Finished)

It would be great if you could help the community to find out what future API design methods and tools should do – by filling out a short survey.

Update: Please find the survey results in this SummerSoC 2021 paper.

Context and Goals

Putting our researcher hats on, my colleague Mirko Stocker and me about to start an applied research and development project on Quality-Driven API Refactoring. To make sure we investigate practically relevant problems and mine refactorings that are actually applied in practice, we’d like to hear from practicing API designers and developers:

• What drives API evolution and change?
• How are APIs evolved (tactics, patterns)?
• What are the challenges along the way (element of risk, time sinks)?

Target Audience

The target audience of this survey are:

• Software architects
• Developers (software engineers)
• API product owners

If you currently serve in one or more of these roles — or have done so in the past — to specify, implement and maintain message-based remote APIs (for instance, with RESTful HTTP, gRPC, SOAP), please take a moment to reflect how you have approached API design and evolution on these occasions.

If you have a hard time deciding which experience to report, simply choose one project and API that you deem representative or typical. Your track record is rather rich but also diverse? Just pick one project and/or API.

Link to the Online Survey

We know that your time is precious, so we will not occupy any more of it than necessary. Participation in this survey of course is voluntary, and the data is collected anonymously.

We estimate that you should be able to answer the questions within 15 minutes:

Online form via https://tinyurl.com/api-change-survey or direct link

Thank you very much in advance for your participation!

Kind regards

– Olaf (and Mirko)