Our study also stresses the importance of developing clients
for change on what concerns web API integration. The promise
of loosely coupled web service APIs comes, in fact, at the cost of
having changes forced upon the client developers. Should developers fail to implement proper separation of concerns, switching
to different web API providers may also prove more difficult
than what “loosely coupled” would otherwise suggest. While
some web API providers may allow developers to use their old
web API versions for extended periods of time, in general, all
web API providers will sooner or later impose changes on their
clients