Sam Newman - Backends For Frontends
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So in practice, our mobile devices will want to make different calls, fewer calls, and will want to display different (and probably less) data than their desktop counterparts. This means that
we need to add additional functionality to our API backend to support our mobile interfaces. Another problem with the general-purpose API backend is that they are by definition providing functionality to multiple, user-facing applications. This means that the single API backend can become a bottleneck when rolling out new delivery, as so many changes are trying to be made to the same deployable artifact.
The tendency for the general-purpose API backend to take on multiple responsibilities, and therefore require lots of work, often results in a team being created specifically to handle this code base
It could be argued that at this point we have just created a smart-piece of middleware in our architecture, something which is not focused on any particular business domain - something which goes against many people’s views of what sensible Service Oriented Architecture should look like.