Using the OpenAPI Specification

As an enterprise developer, you care about API quality. That’s why at Cisco we are putting so much attention on the design, implementation, and documentation of our APIs published for internal or external consumption.

For many of our APIs – from security and network controllers, to collaboration and IoT – we have standardized on a REST style and invested in methodology and tooling around the OpenAPI Specification (OAS).

What is the OpenAPI Specification?

Perhaps you have been consuming or implementing APIs for some time, but have not paid too much attention to the OpenAPI Specification (OAS). No worries, we’ve got you covered! 

Simply put, OAS defines a standard description language which allows both humans and computers to discover and understand the capabilities of a RESTful API. 

Who benefits from the OpenAPI Specification?  

I started putting my hands on OAS in 2013, as Swagger was in its early days. Ten years later, I am still regularly amazed by the possibilities that come when leveraging OAS and the pace of innovation in the OpenAPI community.

It turns out that OAS is not only a great format to describe an API, it is also a central piece of information that can benefit developers consuming APIs, engineering providing these APIs, and organizations overseeing the quality and security of their APIs.

Let’s take a look at some of the benefits for these different job roles:

What you can expect at Cisco Live

Good news! For Cisco Live 2022 we have organized a large set of classes and hands-on workshops that will bring you up to speed on the OpenAPI Specifications. We will also share Cisco learnings and latest innovations with OAS toolsets.

Joining these sessions, you’ll learn about OpenAPI, latest findings and product updates from Cisco:

Container Security and their APIs; Two Sides of the Same Security Coin – BRKSEC-2080
Join Peter Bosch, Distinguished Engineer at Cisco, to discuss the security problems and vulnerabilities exposed through APIs. See how Cisco SecureCN addresses both sides of the security coin – container workload and API security – in one tool.
Monday, June 13, 11:00 AM – 11:45 AM PDT

Living on the Edge: From Developers to Ops – INTDEV-1250
Join this session with Grace Francisco, VP of Cisco Developer Relations Strategy and Experience, to discover how organizations can harness developer-led innovations to gain new insights, increase operational efficiency, and realize the transformative potential in systems, services, and software.
Tuesday, June 14 4:00 PM – 4:30 PM PDT

The 12 facets of the OpenAPI standard – DEVNET-1346
Join Stève Sfartz, Principal Architect at Cisco and Distinguished Speaker, as he introduces the OpenAPI Specifications (OAS) and how Cisco Products leverage this industry standard to drive API quality and state-of-the-art developer experience. We’ll discuss OpenAPI best practices, tools, and processes available to the developer community.
Tuesday June 14, 10:00 AM – 10:45 AM PDT

API Design-First – Not Just Another Pretty Interface – DEVNET-2092
Join David Staudt, DevNet Developer Advocate and Principal Engineer at Cisco, for this introduction to the concepts of “API design-first.” He’ll demonstrate the use of some excellent open-source tools that make it easy to create a fully RESTful API (OpenAPI spec), automatically generate perfect, interactive docs (Swagger UI), and easily spin-off flawless, language-specific SDKs (Swagger Codegen).
Wednesday, June 15, 4:00 PM – 4:45 PM PDT

These Workshops let you get hands-on with OpenAPI using some of Cisco APIs

Using ISE OpenAPI to automate certificate management – DEVLIT-1220
Join Steve McNutt, Cisco Technical Solutions Architect, for an overview of common certificate management issues with ISE, and a demonstration of how automation can help. You’ll leave this session with awareness of the new OpenAPI in ISE 3.1, and familiarity with example code that performs an automated certificate management task.
Tuesday, June 14, 11:00 AM – 11:20 AM PDT

Custom OpenAPI implementation for Cisco SD-WAN – DEVWKS-2367
Join Adrian Iliesiu, Cisco Software Engineering Technical Leader and Distinguished Speaker, for this hands-on workshop. Attendees will develop a Python OpenAPI application on top of Cisco vManage REST APIs. The purpose of the application is to offer a multi-tenant operational view with metrics and statistics gathered from several different vManage instances and consolidated into one single web application view.
Wednesday, June 15, 10:00 AM – 10:45 AM PDT

Real-world API Attacks, and How to Protect Your Cloud-native Apps – DEVWKS-2919
APIs are now a very common attack vector into these apps and visibility into their use (and misuse) is critical. This DevNet Workshop with Brian Sak, Cisco Technical Solutions Architect, will give you hands-on monitoring API calls within a Kubernetes-deployed cloud-native application.
Wednesday, June 15, 11:00 AM – 11:45 AM PDT

Attend Cisco Live in-person or virtually

We would love you to join us in the DevNet Zone. Join some of the classroom sessions and hands-on workshops detailed above. And stop by the “HelloWorld” booth to discuss your insights or challenges with our API experts. We are bringing in demos about the toolsets we use around OAS, our future plans and discuss our latest announcements.

New this year at Cisco Live! is the opportunity to reserve yourself a seat in the sessions. Use the links above to pre-register. Or, register here to attend these sessions online! The Cisco Live broadcast will follow the sun to bring learning and experience to everyone.

Join our daily livestream from the DevNet Zone during Cisco Live!

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