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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 20 2012 @ 12:17 PM EDT |
A human readable document that fully specifies the application programming
interface(API) is in fact documenting the corresponding >Library<.
Granted, it is not the full documentation of that library because it does not
describe the implementation. But that 'API' document is of the Library itself
because it describes the calling conventions for each published tool in the
library.
Indeed, an API as such is (dare I say it) deterministically derived from the
Library. ALL the key/critical/essential (in legalese: material) words/symbols in
the API have to EXACTLY match the corresponding word/symbols in the library for
the Interface to, well, interface. That's the essence of functionality.
Granted modern APIs also define constants, records, and other programming pieces
used with the tools in the Library, but they also fall out of the inputs and
outputs of the library's tools.
An 'API' to a non-existent library is not an API, because it doesn't interface
to anything. Its not an Application Programming >Interface<. Umm... Call
it an APH (Application Programming Hope?
As for Oracle's 'API Specification'; its mystifying.
JG
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- Swing and a Miss - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 20 2012 @ 12:33 PM EDT
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