September 2024 Summaries

GraphQL and OpenAPI are two important frameworks within the enterprise for API standards. Both define agreements between data consumers and providers but have significant differences in capabilities and contract specifications. In terms of data governance, GraphQL has a sophisticated type system, a well-defined query language, and a flexible, structured extensibility approach. It can accomplish everything that OpenAPI can and aligns more easily with underlying data sources. However, establishing internal standards and practices to maintain lineage back to underlying data, generating audit evidence, managing fine-grained access controls, and supporting consistent experiences across multiple client protocols requires technical leadership, architecture, and design across a distributed data delivery environment.

A global biopharmaceutical company has successfully transformed its data management capabilities within the research division, using Hasura to build a custom metadata service on top of AWS S3 and PostgreSQL. The new system allows researchers to register and upload their data assets, reducing dependency on central IT teams and enabling seamless end-to-end self-service on data uploads. Hasura's eventing system keeps the metadata store synchronized with the data lakehouse, eliminating the need for custom solutions like SQS and reducing operational complexity. The platform director estimates that using Hasura saved six months of engineering effort compared to building out all features from scratch.