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Glossary: integrations
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Conversations about integrations are thick with acronyms: API, REST, SOAP, SFTP, EDI, MT940. They all describe the same problem — how two systems exchange data — but in different ways, with different consequences for running it afterwards.
Ways to connect
- API
- An agreed entrance a package offers for retrieving or writing data. The supplier decides what is allowed and keeps it working.
- REST and JSON
- The most common modern form: a request to a web address, an answer in JSON — a compact text format both people and machines can read.
- SOAP and XML
- The older, more formal variant with a strictly defined message format. Still widely used by enterprise and government systems.
- SFTP
- File exchange over a secured connection, preferably with keys rather than passwords. The sober fallback when there is no API.
Formats and working methods
- MT940
- The standard file banks use to deliver statements. Reading it automatically means matching payments without manual work.
- CAMT.053
- The XML successor to MT940. Banks still supply both; which one you get depends on your bank and your package.
- EDI
- Message traffic between organisations following fixed agreements, common in trade and logistics.
- Batch and real time
- Processing at fixed times versus passing data on immediately. Real time sounds better but is rarely needed and always more work to run.
In the end the acronym matters less than the question underneath: who owns the data, how often does it need to move, and what happens when it goes wrong once?
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