What is one characteristic of Cisco DNA Center and vManage northbound APIs?

Northbound APIs are consumed by external systems to interact with the controller; the controller then uses southbound APIs to push configuration changes *down* to devices, so the northbound API itself does not directly push to devices.

Modern Cisco DNA Center and vManage APIs primarily exchange data using JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), not XML (Extensible Markup Language), for better interoperability and efficiency.

Both Cisco DNA Center and vManage expose northbound APIs that are RESTful. For configuration and operational data access, these APIs often implement the RESTCONF protocol, which uses YANG data models over HTTP to provide a programmatic interface.

NETCONF is a protocol for managing network devices, often used for southbound communication or direct device management, while northbound APIs are typically RESTful protocols like RESTCONF for higher-level orchestration.