Web API Change Visualizations

Interactively Exploring API Changes and Versioning Consistency

This paper introduces APIcture, an innovative visualization approach for understanding Web API evolution. We developed two complementary visualization techniques that help developers, researchers, and API consumers understand how APIs change over time.

API Changes Visualization

The first visualization shows detailed changes occurring at specific time intervals, helping users understand the evolution patterns of Web APIs. This temporal view reveals:

• When significant changes occurred
• The nature of breaking vs. non-breaking changes
• Frequency of updates across different API components

API Version Clock

The second visualization provides an overarching view of version upgrades and change patterns using a clock metaphor. This circular representation helps identify:

• Version release cycles and patterns
• Consistency in versioning strategies
• Relationship between major and minor updates

Tool Impact

APIcture empowers researchers, developers, and users to gain deeper insights into the evolution of web APIs. The tool enables users to comprehend the temporal sequence of changes, assess compatibility issues, and understand versioning practices across different APIs.

Our evaluation demonstrates that APIcture effectively reveals API evolution patterns that are difficult to discern through traditional textual comparisons or simple diff tools.