Category talk:Application programming interfaces

Hi. I was wondering if this page is "too technical," even for me, a techie. My firm uses API's (Application programming interfaces) for doing mass quantities of work that ordinarily one would do one at a time. In other words, we have a system for creating a new user ID on a system, or for terminating a person's access. But suppose we have 50 new users-- in that case, we use an API. I would like to know how this is done, like does it mimic XML (HTML web page language which has tags for each field, like firstName, I imagine) and interface with an online program? Or is there some other technique? And what language can they be written in?

Thanks, Pete Monday, Nov 26 2007