June 2020 Summaries

The Apollo Explorer is a new tool for navigating graphs and building GraphQL queries in Apollo Studio. It aims to provide an intuitive experience for graph consumers, product engineering teams that work with production data graphs. The Explorer includes features like dynamic field selection, intelligent search, and built-in documentation to help users compose exactly the query they need. Its operation editor is built on Monaco and provides full IntelliSense support for GraphQL, including query linting, autocomplete, and peek definitions. The tool also enables users to "step into their schema" and build queries without typing, with features like automatic variable creation and intelligent search. Additionally, it includes a history tab to view previously executed queries and comes with both light and dark themes.

Apollo Graph Manager has been renamed to Apollo Studio, a name change that reflects the product's expanded scope and vision. The new name is more approachable and powerful, and it better represents the tool's ability to help every member of an organization shape, explore, and measure their data. The first delivery of Apollo Studio includes a new Explorer tab that enables users to build and run queries on their graph directly from the platform, marking a significant step forward in the product's development. With more features and updates on the way, the team invites users to stay tuned and reach out for help at [email protected].

The Apollo Graph Manager's schema registry allows teams to explore, maintain, and monitor their data graph with the help of features that require a synced schema. To facilitate this, Apollo has introduced a new feature called schema reporting, which enables automatic registration of the server's schema with the Graph Manager on startup, making it easier for teams to keep their schemas up-to-date. This feature provides several benefits, including tracking schema history, sharing and iterating on development schemas, setting up continuous integration, and improving autocomplete features in IDEs like VS Code. To get started with schema reporting, teams need to sign up for Graph Manager, obtain an API key, set the `APOLLO_KEY` environment variable, and configure their server to report its schema using the `engine.reportSchema` option. Additionally, any GraphQL server can implement the schema reporting protocol, which is publicly documented, allowing Apollo to support various servers in using this feature.