Application Programming Interface (API)
An application programming interface (API) is a set of functions, procedures, methods or classes that an operating system, library or service provides to support requests made by computer programs.
Language-dependent APIs are available only in a particular programming language. They utilise the syntax and elements of the programming language to make the API convenient to use in this particular context.
Language-independent APIs are written in a way that means they can be called from several programming languages. This is a desired feature for a service-style API which is not bound to a particular process or system and is available as a remote procedure call.