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

While they can exchange XML, JSON is also commonly used; the primary characteristic is being RESTful, not exclusively XML content.

Both Cisco DNA Center and Cisco vManage expose northbound APIs that adhere to the Representational State Transfer (REST) architectural style. These APIs typically use HTTP requests with methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE to manage network devices and services, leveraging JSON or XML for data exchange.

NETCONF is a protocol for configuring network devices, distinct from the REST architectural style that these northbound APIs primarily implement.

Northbound APIs are used for external systems to interact with the controller, not for the controller to push configurations down to devices (that's southbound communication).