API (application program interface)
The Application Program Interface (API) acts as an interface between various software programs to exchange data. It enables one application to access data from the other. The main advantage of API is that developers can use it to integrate various features into the application rather than creating from scratch. For example, the airline booking site uses an API to get the schedules from various airlines. Similar application is used in cloud storage to store and automatically synchronize data from the application. Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is the address used by clients to facilitate the exchange of data via the API. The client sends a request using the URI and thereafter, the API contacts the server with the request. The server responds with the result, which is then transferred to the client by API. Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architecture that uses standard HTTP methods and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is a structured protocol using XML, both utilized by API for data transmission between applications.