Web API:A Case study and comparison of the Amazon and eBay E-Commerce API's

1. Web API:A Case study and comparison of the Amazon andeBay E-Commerce API's Presented by: Pranith P Ramamurthy Spring 2010,CS 6125 ppr2111@columbia.edu Prof. Gail Kaiser

2. Agenda • Introduction:WEB API • Amazon ecommerce API • Ebay ecommerce API • Comparison of Amazon and eBay ecommerce API's • Conclusion

3. Introduction:Whats is an API? • Definition: “language and message format used by an application program to communicate with a control program” . • In Simple Terms ,It receives your request, and then, based entirely on the information you gave it returns a result. • Ex:Google API's, Flickr API's, Delicious API's etc

4. Why do companies actually provide API's ? • Create an ecosystem of innovation and tap into a wider audience. • Once such a freedom is given the applications can be extended in ways that may have been impossible, uneconomical or unimaginable for the original developers to do themselves. • The new reality is that open data is a competitive advantage.

5. Why do we need API's? • For example:you need to use maps in your application or a project. • Highly impossible task for you to launch satellites into space and provide your own map interface. • API's come to your rescue. Google Maps or Yahoo Map's API provide rich set of data they have collected and use them for your specific purposes. • Over 1000 Web Service API-added to directory of API tracking site programmableweb.com and many more are expected. • Big market player’s such as Amazon, eBay, Google and others have already released Web API’s.

6. Amazon Web API's. • Amazon Product Advertising API: • Opens doors to Amazon's databases-Build Web store to sell Amazon items or your own items. • As a Developer you get access to large data that Amazon has like: • Reviews, seller reviews,as well as most of the functionality. • Retrieving product and pricing information • Retrieving customer reviews of a product • Retrieving product images • Performing simple and advanced searches • Retrieving wish lists by name, e-mail, and other identifiers.

7. How Product Advertising API works • Your application uses the Product Advertising API to supply details regarding items such as description, images, seller and customer reviews. • Customers shop on your web site. • Customer is ready to purchase the items in their e-commerce shopping cart. • your application sends an form to Product Advertising API and Amazon completes the purchase by getting purchase information. • Amazon fulfills the order by shipping the items.

8. E-Bay Web API's • eBay is a major contender for Amazon in the e-Commerce space, and its database of on-line sales might well be the largest ever assembled. • E-Bay Finding API: • The Finding API provides programmatic access to the next generation search capabilities on the eBay platform. • Lets you search and browse for items listed on eBay, and provides useful metadata to refine searches and enhance the search experience

9. How the E-Bay API works • 1) A user enters "laptop" in your cool application. • 2) Your app uses makes a search request for " laptop" using one of the eBay Web Services. • 3) The eBay database looks for "laptop". • 4) The eBay database sends the response back to you using the API. • 5) Your app displays the search results to the user.

10. Comparison of Amazon v/s eBay Web API’s • Describing Metadata: • In comparison to Amazon, eBay’s tagging of Metadata is limited. • Amazon as a vendor could pull out more info about the Items dimensions and description. • In contrast eBay's only real information is the categorization of the item based on prices and the format used to describe it.

11. Number of Queries made: • Amazon doesn’t have any restrictions on the number of queries made except for no more than 1 per sec per IP. • Ebay has a limit of 5000 queries per day. • REST and SOAP Protocol Support: • Both eBay and Amazon e Commerce API’s provide the options of querying the API’s using both REST and SOAP protocols. • Though eBay has limited set REST API’s its SOAP and XML API’s are particularly rich.

12. Registration Process: • Ebay's has more tedious process,If not confusing. • Amazon's is rather friendly and could be completed in breeze. • Number of Results returned: • Amazon returns 10 items per page for every request. • Ebay returns 400 items per page. • So eBay's more Item per page is improvement for people looking for more popular items.

13. Documentation: • Both Amazon and eBay API’s have been extensively documented and they have lots of tutorials for covering all the details about the API. • Very important: In making API easy to use and understand. • Developer Community interaction: • Amazon has done a good job by supporting their API's well with lot of Developer Forums and organizing Developer Chats. • Ebay on the is trying to have similar developer Forums and Help Desk.

14. Conclusion • Amazon is an impressive performer having created a niche set of functionalities for the developers to use and some very useful developer communities. • It also doesn’t have any restrictions on the number of queries that can be made unlike the eBay services. • eBay-a major player in eCommerce sector and access to its data might well be worth the pain. • Ebay has its share of success to with 60k Users.

15. References • [1] Professional Web APIs with PHP: eBay, Google, PayPal, Amazon, FedEx, Plus Web Feeds by Paul Reinheimer • [2] Professional Web APIs: Google, eBay, Amazon.Com, MapPoint, FedExby Denise M.Gosnell • [3] APIs and Mashups For The Rest Of Us By Gareth Rushgrove- http://www.digital-web.com/articles/apis_and_mashups/. • [4] Programmable Web website: http://www.programmableweb.com/api/. • [5] Amazon Product Advertising API Developer’s guide: http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/. • [6]eBay Finding API official documentation: http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/finding/Concepts/FindingAPIGuide.html.

16. Questions??

17. Thank you :-)