January 2023 Summaries

Pod42, a Hasura chatbot utilizing the GPT AI model trained on Hasura resources such as docs, learn and blog portals, has been launched in its alpha phase. The bot can be accessed by joining Hasura's Discord server at https://hasura.io/discord and asking questions in the #pod42-support channel using the format "@Pod42 <question>". Currently, the bot may provide inaccurate or incomplete answers due to its alpha status, so users are encouraged to verify information from the source and reach out to help forums when needed. Feedback on Pod42 is welcome to improve its performance.

Enterprises are increasingly choosing Hasura for their GraphQL needs due to its ability to auto-generate APIs and provide a built-in authorization layer. The top three reasons for this choice include data access, API production readiness, and increased developer productivity. Hasura simplifies the process of connecting multiple data sources by generating a unified, secure, and real-time GraphQL API. It also offers critical features out of the box such as caching, real-time capabilities, authorization, and observability, reducing time to market. Furthermore, Hasura automates key GraphQL development tasks, cutting down development time by 50% to 80%. Overall, Hasura provides a comprehensive and robust platform for enterprise application development.

The article discusses the use of Hasura's "Allow List" feature to restrict GraphQL operations in applications. This helps prevent excessive data exposure and protect against API scraping. The "Allow List" represents a list of allowed GraphQL Operations that can be executed in an application, ensuring only specified operations are run by the Hasura GraphQL Engine. There are three ways to generate allow lists in Hasura: manually through the project settings, using the monitoring tab to select from previously executed operations, and fully automated via the GraphQL Code Generator library with a plugin that syncs the allow list with front-end code. The plugin is community-based and only works within the JavaScript ecosystem.

The use of GraphQL APIs on data warehouses is increasing as they enable frictionless and high-quality integrations between applications/services and valuable enterprise data stored in these warehouses. Data warehouse integration has become a necessity for many organizations to share their data more widely, incorporate it into applications for better user experiences, and integrate it with other business tools. GraphQL APIs are seen as the most flexible, secure, and performant way to enable these use cases on data warehouses. However, building, scaling, and operating APIs can be time-consuming tasks that may discourage organizations from adopting an API-driven approach to data warehouse integrations. Hasura is addressing this challenge by providing a GraphQL API over transactional sources of data, allowing rapid creation of GraphQL APIs or REST with built-in joining, filtering, pagination & aggregation capabilities.

The text discusses the importance of observability in GraphQL and REST API applications. It explains that as an app grows more complex, it becomes difficult to understand its functionality and performance, which is where observability comes into play. Observability refers to gauging a system's internal conditions by looking at its outputs such as metrics or logs. The text also introduces the three pillars of observability: logs, metrics, and traces. It further explains how Hasura Cloud and Enterprise come with support for these pillars out of the box. The text concludes by emphasizing that observability is a critical aspect of modern systems and can be improved using appropriate tools and techniques offered by Hasura.