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<chapter id="api-overview">
  <title>&PRODUCT; API</title>
  <para>The &PRODUCT; API is a low level API that has been used to implement the &PRODUCT; web UIs.
    It is also a good basis for implementing other popular APIs such as EC2/S3 and emerging DMTF
    standards.</para>
  <para>Many &PRODUCT; API calls are asynchronous. These will return a Job ID immediately when
    called. This Job ID can be used to query the status of the job later. Also, status calls on
    impacted resources will provide some indication of their state.</para>
  <para>The API has a REST-like query basis and returns results in XML or JSON.</para>
  <para>See <ulink
      url="http://docs.cloudstack.org/CloudStack_Documentation/Developer's_Guide%3A_CloudStack">the
      Developer’s Guide</ulink> and <ulink
      url="http://docs.cloudstack.org/CloudStack_Documentation/API_Reference%3A_CloudStack">the API
      Reference</ulink>.</para>
  <xi:include href="provisioning-auth-api.xml" xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"/>
  <xi:include href="allocators.xml" xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"/>
  <xi:include href="user-data-and-meta-data.xml" xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"/>
</chapter>