ASP.NET Web API: what's its target?

Question

I've been playing with ASP.NET Web API samples (http://www.asp.net/web-api/samples).

After some hours of reading articles, checking source code and so on, I got a question.

What's the target of ASP.NET Web API?

• RESTful APIs for Web sites that look to expose some subset of their system to third-parties.

... or/and??? ...

• Pure RESTful APIs that aren't necessarily for Web sites, but for creating SOA or SaaS solutions <--- This is why I'm evaluating different APIs .

In addition, how would it perform ASP.NET Web API working with high-demand services?

Thank you in advance for the info.

Answer 1

Here is the short description and this should have made it super clear by now:

ASP.NET Web API is a framework that makes it easy to build HTTP services that reach a broad range of clients, including browsers and mobile devices. ASP.NET Web API is an ideal platform for building RESTful applications on the .NET Framework.

It is all about HTTP. REST is not in your face. But if you wanna make your application 100% pure REST, ASP.NET Web API is your choice in .NET.

As for the scale-out scenarios, ASP.NET Web API is asynchronous from top to bottom (including extensibility points) and the framework infrastructure allows you to scale out insanely. Of course, it doesn't prevent you to shoot yourself in the foot. You can still write garbage with ASP.NET Web API if you are not careful enough.