Have you ever used a travel website? You navigated to the information screen, entered your mailing address, and the system gave you suggestions of addresses it recognized. You picked the relevant address and then checked flight schedules to your destination. You find the dates and times that work for you and then you’re prompted about hotel stays. You observe the pricing, location, and amenities of each room offered and select the best option. From there you can pick a rental car, and again, you pick the best option. Finally, you make it to the payment page. You enter your credit card information and proceed to checkout. After checkout, you receive emails concerning your travel itinerary. Hotel, flights, and car rental emails are sent to you from the travel site.

This is an example of application integration across multiple domains.

1. Addresses were validated against an address API to ensure the address is real and pulls the one recognized by the US Postal Service.
2. One or many APIs were accessed to get flight information, it could be per airlines or a single standalone service that provides aggregated flight information for all airlines.
3. The same is true for the hotel accommodation. An API was accessed to obtain listings, amenities, and prices of rooms available during your travel period.
4. The car leasing agencies also have APIs allowing access to their inventory for the travel period you initially selected.
5. Another API was accessed to validate your credit card and accept the payment for the total amount. Behind the scenes the application was submitting payment to the relevant vendors via an API.
6. Finally, you receive an email indicating that your reservations have been made. You guessed it, this was done via an API as well.

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