September 2023 Summaries

The Apollo Server team has made significant improvements in Apollo Server 4, focusing on simplifying integrations and improving type safety. The `dataSources` API has been revamped to improve context correctness, and pagination is now handled through a common approach using cursor-based or offset-based methods. Apollo Server supports both federated and monograph architectures, with the latter being more suitable for smaller services or microservices architecture. Subscriptions are supported in Apollo Server 4, but require careful management due to real-time data complexities. Trevor Scheer, an engineer on the project, will be attending GraphQL Summit in San Diego, where he'll be participating in the Apollo Garage. The team is open to feedback and can be reached through GitHub or Discord.

Apollo GraphOS is now generally available, enabling centralized authorization enforcement across any number of connected services in the graph. This eliminates the trade-off between flexibility and scalability in GraphQL APIs, allowing for durable, graph-native access control using directives such as `@requiresScopes` and `@authenticated`. With GraphOS, authz enforcement can be defined declaratively, optimizing query execution and improving defense-in-depth, while also eliminating unauthorized subqueries and deduplicating simultaneous subqueries. The feature is now available in preview for all customers on the GraphOS Enterprise plan running self-hosted instances of Apollo Router, and can be tried out for free for 28 days by non-enterprise customers.