February 2020 Summaries

Hasura Pro offers a comprehensive testing framework for GraphQL APIs. It allows users to validate their GraphQL schema and test its integrity manually or programmatically. Regression tests are crucial in ensuring continued support for operations required by frontend apps or users, as changes to the underlying Postgres schema and/or Hasura configuration could potentially lead to unwanted regressions in the schema. Hasura Pro comes with a comprehensive test bench that lets users seamlessly compile a test suite on each instance and execute them on any GraphQL engine instance. The platform captures an immutable list of operations received by an instance for users to select the operations they want to add to its test suite. Regression tests can be run manually or programmatically in CI/CD pipelines, ensuring early detection of potential breaking changes.

In 2020, Hasura is set to enter its next phase of growth following a recent fundraise. The company aims to enhance the experience for production and enterprise users, accelerate feature development in areas such as GraphQL, security, and Postgres, expand support to other databases beyond the Postgres ecosystem, and invest in its user community. Hasura's technology has been used by various organizations, including startups and Fortune 100 companies, to build applications with a focus on data access and eventing. The company encourages users of Postgres or related databases interested in GraphQL to reach out for collaboration and feedback.

This article discusses how to enhance serverless computing with a GraphQL data-as-a-service layer. It explains that while serverless functions are stateless and can't hold state across invocations, they offer scalability and ease of deployment. However, this also leads to challenges in data access, such as connection pooling, performance optimization, endpoint discovery, load balancing, high availability, and security. The article suggests treating data more like a service than a database and using GraphQL for a unified data API for frontend and serverless app development. It recommends using Hasura to handle these tasks, which supports automatic mapping of database concepts into GraphQL types, fine-grained authorization, transactions over websockets, and high performance with minimal overhead.

The article discusses the challenges and architectures involved in designing robust offline first applications with good user-experience. Making an app offline first requires developers to design for offline first both on the front end and back end, including handling conflicts, migrations, and scenarios where something cannot be completely offline. Offline first is a development paradigm that ensures functionality of an app remains unaffected by intermittent lack of network connection. The article explores various existing approaches to making data available offline, such as versioning objects, using Conflict free replicated data types (CRDT), and shipping changes to the server while storing aggregates on the server. It also covers how to handle migrations and scenarios where certain features cannot be made completely offline. The article concludes by mentioning several frameworks and libraries available for building an offline first app, emphasizing that designing such applications is still challenging and requires careful planning.

Fluent GraphQL clients allow developers to write GraphQL queries as objects instead of strings, making code more readable and efficient. These clients offer strong typing, a single source of truth for type definitions, and autocomplete features. Examples of fluent GraphQL clients include gotql, graphql-zeus, gqless, graphql-typed-client, typed-graphqlify, graphql-codegen-hasura, and graphql-binding. These clients can be particularly useful for Hasura users who are building apps with TypeScript or custom business logic using actions or remote schemas.

Hasura encourages users to give talks about their platform at conferences and meetups. They offer assistance in various ways such as providing feedback on talk proposals, helping with preparation by sharing slides, speaker notes, and videos from previous talks. Additionally, they provide special swag for speakers and help publicize the event through social media, newsletters, and their website. For logistics support, Hasura can assist with travel arrangements if needed. Users can reach out to them via a Google form or email. They also offer other engagement opportunities like starting a Hasura User Group, giving workshops, sponsoring GraphQL meetups, and paid writing opportunities through their Technical Writer Program.

In this post, the author discusses the development of a user interface (UI) for generating database migrations for PostgreSQL. The motivation behind building such a system was to address the challenges faced by developers in managing database schema changes and dependencies. The UI aims to provide an easy-to-use interface that supports both manual and automatic migration management, while maintaining developer experience and productivity. Key features of the UI include: 1. Managing PostgreSQL schema via a web interface for ease of use. 2. Generating/updating migration files directly using text editors for flexibility. 3. Easily migrating between development, staging, and production environments. 4. Supporting rollback functionality with up/down actions for each schema change. 5. Providing error handling with actionable feedback to users. 6. Handling dependency management by warning about modifying schema with dependencies. 7. Offering import/export capabilities for metadata files. 8. Enabling version control and collaboration through a Git-like system for Hasura projects. The UI is built on React, with the Hasura CLI responsible for file generation and persisting migration state in the user's file system. The architecture consists of React components communicating with the server via HTTP POST requests intercepted by the CLI. The UI also supports tracking DML statements in SQL and provides human-readable error notifications. The author compares their migration system to Rails Active Record, highlighting differences in file structure and rollback functionality. They encourage developers to try out the Hasura migration system for a user-friendly experience while acknowledging that it may not be a one-size-fits-all solution for all PostgreSQL users.

Hasura Pro is an enterprise-ready version of the Hasura GraphQL Engine that offers improved reliability and security controls. Launched in July 2018, the open source project has seen widespread adoption across various organizations, including startups, Fortune 500 enterprises, nonprofits, and government departments. The Hasura Pro includes advanced monitoring and analytics capabilities, rate limiting features, regression testing, allow-listing, team management and collaboration tools, SSO integrations for team management, deployment options, and support options with enterprise grade SLAs.