As a user, this approach often leaves things in a difficult state. The front end works, but automating data access is a hard slog through inconsistent API that

As a user, this approach often leaves things in a difficult state. The front end works, but automating data access is a hard slog through inconsistent API that's not fully revealed. Reporting is dependent on what is planned for the front end, not what is needed by the user. Because the front and back are tightly coupled, everything is fragile unless it's baked in. I think many business apps should focus on having an API be a first-class citizen, and there needs to be better standardization in how they're organized and used. GraphQL could be part of that solution. It's also nice when the API lets you do the things you can do from the front end as well as more data-oriented tasks. For example, in Zoho Books, reporting isn't automated by the API, you'd have to roll your own or script the UI. The API should cover both reading and writing data items like transactions and downloading a PDF or Excel report using the reporting interface.