Last year, we announced the availability of Swagger Certification Training, a one-day, hands on class that explores the Swagger specification, SwaggerHub, and third party tooling that software architects, business users, developers, and DevOps are employing when creating APIs.
The trainings are offered by a Swagger partner, HKM Consulting LLC, and is perfect for teams that want to learn the essentials of Swagger and use it to develop, manage, and govern their APIs.
I recently had the chance to sit down with Chris Riley, Partner at HKM Consulting, to learn more about the Swagger certification and training classes, and understand the benefits of getting Swagger certified.
Could you provide some background on how you help companies with their APIs?
HKM Consulting, LLC is an organization that is steeped in API and Middleware technology (e.g. 1990's - CORBA/MOM/EAI, 2000's - Web Services/ESB and REST/Microservices). Our organization helps clients today implement API Management solutions, DevOps, and Cloud infrastructure. The combination of these help implement today's Microservice-based solutions.
I understand you offer different Swagger training classes, could you discuss some of the different trainings you offer?
In our current offerings we have the following:
- Swagger 2.0 Certification Training - this course focuses on educating individuals on the current 2.0 standard, REST fundamentals and hands-on Swagger/Open API construction.
- Practical Application of Swagger/Open API 2.0 - this course leverages the Swagger/OpenAPI specification and demonstrates the impact on different roles within the organization include Architects, Developers, DevOps, Governance and Third Party Developer. .
- Swagger / Open API 2.0 Certification Exam - For individuals that have REST and Swagger/Open API 2.0 experience, the certification test provides formal validation / accreditation.
What can someone expect from attending one of your Swagger trainings? What are the benefits of getting Swagger certified?
Swagger/OpenAPI certification trainings expose the full specification and underlying association to REST APIs via hands on development of Swagger/OpenAPI documents. Once these foundational elements are obtained, taking the next step and learning the full impact on the software development lifecycle is explored via hands on tutorials and exploratory sessions.
The benefits of Swagger/OpenAPI certification is in gaining the confidence in proper application and increasing the consumability of the student's API documentation. With Swagger/OpenAPI standard being adopted by many vendors, it is important to have a solid foundation in proper API definition in order to leverage its portability.
Are there common Swagger challenges you see people run into when getting started with Swagger? How do your trainings help with these challenges?
The key issue we see is an attempt to leverage Swagger/OpenAPI without having created design standards or proper granularity of the API definition. Both of these have a direct impact on the API document such as URI patterns, version identification, JSON payload definition, verbs, and MIME Types for example.
A Swagger/Open API definition is only as good as the preparation organizations put in to create consistency, discoverability and interpretability.
Who could benefit from attending a Swagger training?
Currently the training has been taught to business analysts, architects, developers, and DevOps personnel.
I understand that you use SwaggerHub for your trainings? How have you seen SwaggerHub help teams design/build/document APIs with Swagger?
The SwaggerHub solution is shared in both trainings to explore the collaboration and versioning aspects that APIs undergo. Although SwaggerHub is in its early stages of adoption, the core of what it provides in API documentation governance is an important solution in API-centric environments that cater to an API community.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Swagger training offerings will continue to expand to include the forthcoming Open API 3.0 specification currently under development. In addition we are looking to offer self-service training options.
Interested in Swagger Certification? Check out the full schedule of upcoming Swagger Certification classes.