An API is a contract between a caller and a callee. The most common forms of API abuse are caused by the caller failing to honor its end of this contract. For example, if a program fails to call chdir() after calling chroot(), it violates the contract that specifies how to change the active root directory in a secure fashion. Another good example of library abuse is expecting the callee to return trustworthy DNS information to the caller. In this case, the caller abuses the callee API by making certain assumptions about its behavior (that the return value can be used for authentication purposes). One can also violate the caller-callee contract from the other side. For example, if a coder subclasses SecureRandom and returns a non-random value, the contract is violated.
EJB Bad Practices: Use of AWT/Swing
In this case, the program violates the following EJB guideline:
"An enterprise bean must not use the AWT functionality to attempt to output information to a display, or to input information from a keyboard."
A requirement that the specification justifies in the following way:
"Servers do not allow direct interaction between an application program and a keyboard/display attached to the server system."