Requirements of API Documentation: A Case Study into Computer Vision Services

Using cloud-based computer vision services is gaining traction, where developers access AI-powered components through familiar RESTful APIs, not needing to orchestrate large training and inference infrastructures or curate/label datasets. However, while these APIs seem use, their non-deterministic run-time behaviour evolution adequately communicated developers. Therefore, improving services' API documentation paramount-more extensive facilitates the development process of intelligent software. In a prior study, we extracted 34 artefacts from 21 seminal works, devising taxonomy five key requirements produce quality documentation. We extend this study in two ways. Firstly, by surveying 104 varying experience understand what are most value practitioners. Secondly, identifying which highly-valued well-documented case emerging service domain. identify: (i) several gaps software engineering literature, aspects understanding is/is extensively investigated; (ii) industry vendors (in contrast) document better serve end-developers. provide set recommendations enhance for both wider research community.