Data-oriented APIs are inherently easier to reason about. A struct or an array can't "walk away on its own" (invoke side effects, set hidden flags, etc.). It's just Plain Old Data. Better to construct an object yourself than manipulate it at a distance via opaque method calls.
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How do you feel about SQL APIs? I've seen a couple of companies exposing a modified SQL interfaces (w/ custom functions).
I haven't used SQL in a serious capacity yet so I can't really say. But SQL is good insofar as it requires you to explicitly specify the data you want. The opposite of this is "chaining APIs" where you incrementally build an object via 10 methods that are doing who-knows-what.
