How we have approached this book

The approach we have adopted with this book is worth explaining. If you read the section on the target audience, you'll note we're not aiming only at the developer community but at a wider potential user audience of API Platform Cloud Service. To help us do this, we have set ourselves some parameters that will help you understand why things have been done a particular way.

1. Use tools that the entire target audience can use and understand. So nice integrated developer tools are not used for most of the book. There are a couple of areas where they are relevant, though.
2. Do not force the reader to buy lots of extra products to allow the majority of the examples to be exercised. This does mean that rather than real-end systems, we use tools to allow us to pretend they exist. For example, the use of Apiary to mock up an API.
3. Use a real-world based use case to help illustrate the use of APIs.
4. Rather than explaining every step in each example, we have reduced the amount of explanation provided as certain activities need to be repeated, such as setting up certain API policies.
5. Conveying the ideas and concepts will always take priority over being puritan with best practice.

1. The Oracle APIP CS is fairly new and therefore is a maturing product. Everything in this book will hold largely true for a few years, even if the occasional screen label changes or stylesheets get updated the reader should understand what they are being shown, as well as how.