November 2017 Summaries

The text discusses the benefits of using GraphQL for managing data in applications, particularly when it comes to scalability, flexibility, and performance. It highlights how GraphQL can be used as a language to describe data requirements, allowing for more efficient management of application state. The text also touches on the importance of designing with real data, incremental adoption, architectural improvements, and the potential for GraphQL to be used everywhere in an application. Additionally, it mentions the growth of tools like Apollo Client 2.0, which enable developers to build scalable and maintainable applications using GraphQL. The author emphasizes the need for collaboration among developers to build upon these advancements and create new possibilities with GraphQL.

AWS AppSync is a new GraphQL service launched by Amazon at reInvent, featuring real-time updates and built-in offline support. It's managed in the AWS console and aggregates data from other AWS products like ElasticSearch and DynamoDB. The AppSync Client is based on Apollo Client 2.0, which enables developers to build complex features quickly by describing their data requirements. Offline support is achieved through a custom Apollo Link that uses Redux store and redux-offline for persistence, while real-time data is powered by GraphQL subscriptions using MQTT as the transport layer. The service also has a native client compatible with JavaScript and native platforms written in Swift, generated using Apollo Codegen. The AWS team's use of Apollo Client 2.0 and Apollo Link demonstrates the extensibility of the Apollo platform, inspiring developers to experiment with personalizing their GraphQL client.

The GraphQL Summit conference took place in San Francisco on October 25-26, featuring talks, panels, and hallway discussions on moving the GraphQL community forward. A three-minute highlight video has been released to capture the event's electric atmosphere, while a full playlist of 30 talk videos is available on YouTube. The conference has concluded for this year, but the community looks forward to future developments. To stay updated, follow @graphqlsummit on Twitter and the Apollo YouTube channel. The Apollo team presented three cutting-edge talks on Universal GraphQL, Apollo Client 2.0, and the GraphQL Stack. Lightning talks covered topics such as devtools, mobile apps with GraphQL, and schema-first development. Production stories from companies like New York Times and KLM showcased exciting use cases and architectures built using Apollo-based GraphQL platforms.

Apollo Client 2.0 introduces significant improvements over its predecessor, enabling developers to manage client-side data and fetch from non-GraphQL APIs using the same query language. The new version boasts a revamped modular architecture that is 2–5x faster, 40% smaller, and allows users to upgrade by changing only a few lines of code. Apollo Client 2.0 features an improved cache system, which can be easily swapped out for custom implementations, as well as a powerful network stack called Apollo Link, allowing developers to hook into the request cycle at any point to manipulate data processing and retrieval. This enables the use of GraphQL to manage client-side data, local data, and even REST endpoints in a unified manner, simplifying application development and reducing front-end complexity for React, Angular, and Vue developers. With its modular architecture, Apollo Client 2.0 is designed to be flexible and extensible, allowing developers to tailor their network stack and cache implementation to their application's needs.

Express.com is overhauling its architecture to balance innovation with performance and security. The new shopping experience layer will be powered by a more responsive stack, leveraging Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) as the customer-facing experience layer, built on Oracle's ATG Web Commerce engine. A new product development team focused on Javascript, React, and GraphQL expertise was formed to introduce a new technical stack, with React as the foundational framework and GraphQL selected for its optimization benefits and community acceptance. Apollo Server was chosen for its reputation as being developer-friendly and production-ready, while Apollo Client was selected for its elegant design choices and efficient toolset. The new GraphQL-based architecture has significantly boosted development velocity, allowing for faster product development and faster iteration on changes. Additionally, the use of Apollo Engine has helped identify performance issues and backend API errors, providing confidence in the entire stack and enabling further optimization efforts.

The text discusses the benefits and capabilities of GraphQL, an open-source technology that allows for more efficient data fetching and querying. The main benefits of GraphQL include its well-specified query language, decoupling of API providers from consumers, and ability to specify cache control information in the response. The text also explores three aspects of data fetching: caching across requests, tracing, and schema stitching. Caching can be achieved through a gateway layer that lives outside the API layer and provides fine-grained cache control hints. Tracing allows for detailed performance insights and is enabled by leveraging GraphQL's response extension functionality. Schema stitching enables modularization of architecture while retaining the benefits of having a single universal GraphQL API. The text concludes that GraphQL has the potential to be transformative technology in the future and encourages readers to get involved in the community.