DeveloperWeek 2025: Full Schedule

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12:00pm PST

OAI Workshop: Intro to Contract Testing: Evolving APIs Safely

Tuesday February 11, 2025 12:00pm - 12:50pm PST

Frank Kilcommins, SmartBear, Principal API Technical Evangelist

Microservices and modular API architectures have transformed the technical landscape, enabling rapid innovation, faster releases, and decentralized evolvability. However, scaling these architectures introduces significant challenges. Managing dependencies between providers, consumers, and environments often leads to API sprawl, increasing complexity and diminishing returns. Traditional reliance on integration and end-to-end testing struggles to keep pace, resulting in high costs, lengthy feedback loops, and the rise of “zombie APIs.”

Contract testing offers a scalable and efficient alternative to address these challenges, rebalancing the testing pyramid by focusing on the interactions between API providers and consumers. With bi-directional contract testing, teams can leverage existing OpenAPI artifacts and design-first workflows to validate changes without needing expensive, brittle end-to-end setups. Providers gain insight into the impact of API changes, while consumers understand the surface area of APIs they rely on.

We will cover:

- The limitations of end-to-end testing in modern API architectures.
- How contract testing reduces complexity and promotes collaboration.
- The fundamentals of provider and consumer workflows for bi-directional contract testing.
- How to leverage tools like Pact to maximize OpenAPI investments and enable faster scaling.
- Demonstrations showcasing contract testing in action.

Whether you're navigating a microservices ecosystem or building a modular API platform, this workshop will empower you to evolve APIs safely, deliver value faster, and streamline your testing strategy. Join us to bring clarity and confidence to your API architecture.

Speakers

Frank Kilcommins

Principal API Technical Evangelist, SmartBear

Frank has over 15 years’ experience in the technology industry, with his roles spanning from software engineering to enterprise architecture. His mission is to inspire, engage with and support the API community and SmartBear customers across the end-to-end API Development Lifecycle... Read More →

Tuesday February 11, 2025 12:00pm - 12:50pm PST
DeveloperWeek PRO STAGE

Tracks & Topics APIs & Microservices
Session Type PRO Workshop Day (Tues)
Conferences OpenAPI Summit
In-Person/Virtual In Person

1:00pm PST

OAI Workshop: Linting API Descriptions: Consistency is King for Developer Experience!

Tuesday February 11, 2025 1:00pm - 1:50pm PST

DeveloperWeek PRO STAGE

Erik Wilde, INNOQ, Principal Consultant

API descriptions are describing the surface of an API so that it is clear how an API works. It can be a good idea to check these descriptions against general good practices or against specific internal good practices for API designs. Linting is the process that allows those checks to be performed, by taking the description, letting a linter inspect it, and then get warnings or errors regarding the API design.

In this workshop, we look at the various motivations to use API linting. We then specifically look at HTTP-based APIs, OpenAPI as their description language, and Spectral as a popular open source linting tool. Spectral performs opinionated linting out of the box by having a set of build-in rules. Spectral allows users to add their own rules or completely replace the built-in rules. Spectral also supports modularization so that for example in larger organizations, different APIs can use different combinations of rules for various APIs. In this workshop we cannot give a complete tutorial of Spectral, but you will walk away with a good understanding of when to use it, how to apply it to your use cases, and what its general capabilities look like.

Speakers

Erik Wilde

Ambassador, OpenAPI

Erik Wilde is an experienced and internationally known professional in the space of digital transformation and API strategy and management. Erik has degrees in computer science from TU Berlin and ETH Zurich. He is the author of many articles and papers, various books, multiple standards... Read More →

Tuesday February 11, 2025 1:00pm - 1:50pm PST
DeveloperWeek PRO STAGE

Tracks & Topics APIs & Microservices
Session Type PRO Workshop Day (Tues)
Conferences OpenAPI Summit
In-Person/Virtual In Person