November 2020 Summaries

The Hasura Data Dictionary is an open-source project designed to help developers understand their data graph, including database relationships and GraphQL schemas. It also assists in creating complex GraphQL queries. The Data Dictionary provides a visual entity-relationship view of table relationships and a GraphiQL tab for experimenting with queries. Currently supporting Postgres databases, future updates will include MySQL and SQL Server support. Developers can contribute to the project and use it as a starting point for their specific needs.

Hasura has introduced a new feature allowing users to monitor their Hasura projects with Datadog. This integration is available for Hasura Cloud's Standard Plan and Enterprise for on-prem or private cloud deployment. It enables the sending of operation logs to an organization's Datadog dashboard, providing visibility into GraphQL queries, mutations, success rates, errors, and exceptions. The setup process in Hasura Cloud is straightforward, requiring just a few minutes to configure. This integration enhances monitoring capabilities across all application tiers and components, including the UI, back-end database, and now the Hasura data access and logic layer. To get started, users can refer to the provided tutorials and sign up for a Hasura Cloud Standard Plan or explore the always-free plan if new to Hasura and GraphQL.

RedwoodJS is a full-stack serverless web application framework that simplifies JAMstack application development by abstracting away complexity. It uses React with Apollo for the frontend and Prisma for its GraphQL backend, enabling quick backend creation with Dashboard/GUI support. Hasura is a tool that lets you build instant GraphQL backends from your existing database, making it easy to create GraphQL APIs. In this tutorial, we learn how to use Hasura with RedwoodJS to make the development process even more efficient. The steps involve building a Hasura GraphQL backend, bootstrapping a RedwoodJS app, creating a page, setting up Hasura in RedWoodJS, generating a cell, and modifying the graphql.config.js file for additional benefits. By combining these two powerful tools, developers can create full-stack applications with ease while leveraging the latest bleeding technology and focusing on writing only styles and business logic.

AWS Aurora is a SQL database-as-a-service offering from Amazon AWS that leverages the company's infrastructure to deliver higher performance, scalability, and reliability. It is compatible with MySQL and Postgres and offers two types of engines - provisioned and serverless. The storage subsystem of Aurora is distributed across multiple Availability Zones, ensuring automatic six-way replication of data and continuous backup to Amazon S3. Hasura Cloud is a fully managed Hasura service that scales automatically, guarantees high availability, and offers global distribution. It works with Postgres versions 9.5 and above and includes additional features such as distributed tracing, automatic caching of shared data, rate limiting, regression tests, read replicas, etc. Setting up AWS Aurora with Hasura Cloud involves creating an Aurora database, setting up a Security Group to allow Hasura Cloud to connect to the DB cluster, and then connecting the existing Postgres database to Hasura Cloud.

Hasura Cloud now allows users to deploy their projects in five different regions including Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Europe (Frankfurt), US East (Ohio), and US West (Northern California). This feature aims to improve application performance by reducing data latency between the web front-end, Hasura Cloud GraphQL endpoint, databases, and services. Deploying applications closer to users can also reduce response time and enhance user experience. Users can easily select a region during project creation or migration from existing projects in settings. New regions will be added in the future.

The exploration of Evolutionary Database Design, GraphQL, and schema migrations is detailed from the perspective of a new member of the Hasura team, focusing on how these technologies can enhance database management and development. Evolutionary Database Design is highlighted as a long-standing practice that improves integration between database administrators and application developers, ensures schema versioning, and supports automation in managing database changes. It is emphasized that these practices, while sometimes associated with Agile methodologies, are independent and effective in maintaining robust database systems. The use of GraphQL via APIs is discussed as a modern approach to database access, necessitating the management of API and database schemas in tandem, which can be facilitated by tools like the Hasura CLI. Future posts will delve into practical examples of database schema migrations, illustrating how to set up schema migrations for new applications using both user interfaces and manual processes with Hasura's tools.