nathanfish.com

Yahoo recently launched YQL http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/ it provides developers with unique and compelling access to structured data. Instead of calling different web service interfaces that have limited inputs and limited outputs, you simply write a query. This is brilliant. As a developer I previously had to call multiple services, using different inputs, capture all the data and merge it into a meaningful experience for the user. Now all I have to do is create a single query, get the data in the way I want and present to the user. It’s like righting a SQL query, with joins, and all the other fancy stuff. This is cutting edge stuff and I’m very interested in seeing who will be next to support something like this. Personally Google Analytics comes to mind. Right now their API is very limiting, and highlights the challenges with current API development. The interface can be very limiting for the developer. Limiting applicability or causing inefficient use of API’s to achieve results. I have seen, for example, a loop through thousands of results from one API to get additional details on each of the items in the result. YQL will certainly allow a developer to avoid that mess. Now if only I could use proxy YQL service to mashup sources across platforms, get data from Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay, Google in a single YQL like call. Dreams, I know, but the amazing consumer applications that could be created, easily and without any fuss. Add in some data portability and I’m in mashup heaven.

Update: YQL does allow you to access other web services using the YQL syntax, its called “YQL Open Tables”. You simply define a few things in an XML file and you can use YQL to query Amazon products, etc. This is really great stuff. Thanks to spullara for pointing it out.

Tagged as Web Services, Yahoo + Categorized as Web Services