Shopping.com Partners Resource Center Developer Blog
The Shopping.com API: What's in Store
In my last post, I talked about the SDC API - where it came from, and what it provides today. The SDC API is the industry leader and is currently helping hundreds of our Partners to better monetize their site. But we think we can make it even better!
We've been gathering Partner feedback over the years, listening to what you like, what you don't like, and what could be made easier. We've taken this feedback, and designed an entirely new interface, with simplicity, consistency, configurability, and ease of use in mind. This interface will become the core of a new and improved API, which will bring with it web service standards compliance, increased stability (already at 99.9% uptime,) as well as tools for faster implementations, such as Software Development Kits, Schemas/WSDLs, and all the documentation you could want.
But, all these new features come at a cost. A new interface means our Partners will need to re-implement the parts of their code which communicate with the SDC API. While we think these changes can be made without too much difficulty, we are fully aware that implementation times can be vastly different between Partners, due to schedules, development team sizes, as well as site design. In response, we plan on maintaining availability of our current API for 1 full year beyond the launch of a functionally equivalent new API. Currently, we are planning on an initial release with partial functionality in Q3 '07, and a final release with complete functionality in the first half of '08. This means the current API will be available until at least Q1 '09.
I'd like to end this post with an encouragement for feedback. We really do want a discussion here, as the SDC API is, and will be, all about providing what our Partners need. In the future, I will be providing more detail, including the XML Schemas, but in the short term I'd like to hear your thoughts on the direction we're taking, as well as continued feedback on the current API.
Thanks!
5 Comments
chucknorris – 2007-08-10T08:46:18
Awesome. I have been waiting for these development for a long time. I would love to get my hands on the schema. What can I do?
Brian DeSpain – 2007-08-28T10:35:45
No offense but deprecating a working web service is a hideously bad idea. Amazon has had several changes in their APIs without deprecating previous version - meaning they have maintained backwards compatibility. I have legacy applications that are going to require some work depending on the nature of the changes. Please tell me why you can maintain compatibility with the previous version of the API.
Brian DeSpain – 2007-08-28T11:33:25
One other issue. As a partner your schedule seems a bit strange.
"Currently, we are planning on an initial release with partial functionality in Q3 '07, and a final release with complete functionality in the first half of '08. This means the current API will be available until at least Q1 '09."
Doesn't this mean that the is should be available through mid 09? This means you plan releasing something in the next month since September is the last month in Q3. You should realize that some of us are going to be re-building multiple applications right? And since I have been a partner for pretty long time (long before the acquisition by Ebay) I have tons of legacy apps to upgrade. Why should I as partner when I can just as easily replace shopping.com with something like Pricerunner? Just to give you more feedback, making this much work for partner is annoying to the partner for non descript additional functionality. You really should let us know what the cool features so we can get excited about it and from a purely business perspective, justify the several hundred hours worth of engineering this going to consume.
Brian DeSpain – 2007-09-05T08:52:34
Support hours? I would really like to be able to purchase support hours for the shopping.com API so that I can get a timely response on queries. I currently purchase hours for the ebay developer support and it's been great. Any chance you will be implementing that for shopping.com. I would really like a quicker response to questions and am willing to pay for it.
BSD
Tapos – 2007-09-25T20:27:23
Nice. But I have some question
1: what is variable list to build a query for the API?
2: what purpose is served by the variable?
Thanks,
Tapos
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