Storing and Reporting on data retrieved from an API

Question

I have a very high-level, generic question related to the retrieval of data with an API, the storage of that data, and the ability to report off of the data. My background is primarily on the database side with a specific focus on reporting out of Crystal. That being said, I'm fairly green when it comes to APIs, SDKs, .NET, and Visual Studio, so feel free to respond as if I'm 5.

I've attached a quick mock-up of the application architecture for context. The vendor we're working with touts their APIs as the best way to retrieve data for reporting purposes, but I'm struggling with visualizing the layer between raw API data retrieval and a reporting environment. Having not worked with API data retrieval in the past, can someone explain to me in layman's terms how this process would work?

1.) How would I go about retrieving data from the app server via the vendor's API? Is it as simple as creating a visual studio project and coding the API call?

2.) Let's say I'm able to retrieve the data with an API call, what is the best method for storing / reporting against that data? Is it possible to develop real-time reports out of visual studio with API call data?

3.) If #2 is not possible, the data pulled from the API calls will have to be stored somewhere. Is it possible to code the API calls to write results directly to a separate reporting datamart?

Again, I apologize if these questions are extremely elementary. I'm basically looking for context around the scenario to identify how close or rather far off I am in my understanding.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

i´m going to try to answer each question as high level as possible:

1) Retrieving the data via the API is fairly simple, you need to code the call with a proper requerst and handle the response, for example if your API is exposed with a REST web service all you need to do is make an http call to the ws endpoint according to the service definition.

2) You said that the report requirement is probably a SSRS report. The way to proceed depends on how you want to handle this data. One approach culd be to store it in a database and then create a report server project that generates reports with this data.

3) Yes, according to the data format you can do whatever you want with it, from exporting a csv file to store it inside a dedicated database.

I hope this was useful in some way, as i´m not super experienced in report generation but have worked with different APIs handling data