As Saxo is working to create the vision for its next version of OpenAPI, the multi-asset investment specialist is looking for many sources of inspiration as to what needs to get improved.

Benny Boye Johansen, Head of OpenAPI at Saxo Bank, explains that one initiative is a collaboration with the Department of Digitalization at Copenhagen Business School with the purpose to assess API quality and how different ways of working, different design methodologies, and different forms of governance may affect delivery speed and API quality.

One of the first activities was to gauge the current quality of Saxo’s OpenAPI. Instead of just relying on Saxo’s own gut feeling about what may constitute a “good” API, the CBS team wanted to derive a more objective measure.

Being quite thorough and academic, they scoured a long list of 59 resources, including developer blogs, academic articles, and vendor material to identify attributes which were mentioned as important to API quality. They subsequently grouped these into categories, themes, and indicators, and presented these to a number of OpenAPI front-runner companies, such as Saxo for feedback and refinement.

Their findings will later be published and detailed in a CBS working paper, but Benny Boye Johansen has been allowed to provide a small overview/summary.

The table below summarises CBS’ early findings. All stated measures are divided into two broad categories (Product attributes and Process Attributes). Each category comprises several themes (Documentation, Security etc.), each of which then includes a number of quality indicators, the number of which are included is indicated in brackets.

Benny Boye Johansen notes that “developing and managing a comprehensive OpenAPI supporting hundreds of partners and millions of trades from over 180 countries is a multifaceted challenge. To be successful, both as providers and consumers one must consider many factors and remember that there is more than meets the eye when it comes to a true assessment of OpenAPI quality”.

Saxo Bank’s OpenAPI offers:

• Access to all resources and functionality required to build a high-performance multi-asset trading platform.
• Better integration with Saxo Bank for partners and affiliates through a growing set of resources, such as Saxo’s Onboarding API.