Glossary ​

Oh The Acronyms! (OTA)

It seems like there is a TLA dispenser somewhere in CAP land. In this document we will try to break down all the acronymns, the initialisms and any other word or command that you might get confused about.

API ​

Application Programming Interface - literaly anything that is exposed as a function or a SDK. More often that not someone will mean a ReST API exposed via HTTP.

CAP ​

Offically it stands for the SAP Cloud Application Programming Model but CAP is much handier than SCAPM and it reminds you of a cap that you put on your head.

HTTP ​

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (I guess the second t should be lowercase 😉 ) In any case the protocol for the internet and not to be confused with Hyperspace Bypasses.

HTTP is the underlying protocol of the web and if you want to really get more infomation about this than you care to know then pop over to the HTTP Working Group

ReST ​

Representational State Transfer aka 'All The Rage' Roy Fielding was the guy who got the party started back when the internet was being born in the 1990's.

You can find excellent information on the wikipedia page, an excellent piece by IBM

The six main points are:

1. Uniform interface

2. Client-server decoupling

3. Statelessness

4. Cacheability

5. Layered system architecture

6. Code on demand (optional).

and there is more on both those topics on both those links above.