April 2023 Summaries

WunderGraph has raised $3M in seed funding to build a GitHub-like platform for APIs, aiming to provide a standardized way to integrate and compose APIs. The company is addressing the challenges faced by developers when integrating multiple APIs from different sources, such as monolithic applications with numerous internal REST & GraphQL APIs. WunderGraph is treating APIs as dependencies, similar to how npm packages are treated, enabling composable and collaborative API development. With its cloud-based solution, users can deploy APIs in minutes without worrying about infrastructure and DevOps tasks. The company is now moving into Phase 4, focusing on developer collaboration through "WunderGraph Hub", which will allow for easy sharing, discovery, collaborative design, and tracking of API changes.

We're hiring! We're looking for Golang (Go) Developers, DevOps Engineers and Solution Architects to help shape the future of Microservices, distributed systems, and APIs. By working at WunderGraph, you'll have the opportunity to build the next generation of API and Microservices infrastructure, with a customer base ranging from small startups to well-known enterprises. The new Vue Query client is built on top of Vue Query and brings all the good stuff from WunderGraph to the Vue ecosystem, allowing for typesafe queries, mutations, and subscriptions in Vue. The integration has been built by one of our community members, Hebilicious, and a quick start guide is available for setting up the client in a Nuxt project. To use the hooks, you need to modify your code generation to include the base typescript client and configure the Vue Query client through a plugin. The new client offers features such as live queries, subscriptions, mutations, and invalidating queries, with examples and reference materials available for learning more.

The Svelte Query client is now officially launched, offering seamless integration with WunderGraph's API into the Svelte ecosystem. The client provides a set of utilities to connect APIs with Svelte and offers fully typesafe querying, mutating, and subscribing capabilities. It is built on top of TanStack Svelte Query and allows users to build the next generation of API and Microservices infrastructure. The release is still in beta, and feedback from users is invaluable to the development team. To set up the client, users need to modify their code generation, generate the base typescript client using `wunderctl generate`, and configure the svelte query functions by creating a new file with specific code. The client provides various utilities for querying, subscribing, mutating, and uploading files, as well as options for conditional-fetching and SSR support. Users can share their experience with Svelte Query by joining the Discord server or commenting below.

The Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) pattern, originally pioneered by SoundCloud, is a solution for developing varied user experiences with manageable data flows. It involves creating separate microservices for each frontend, with the WunderGraph SDK acting as an API gateway that coordinates calls between the frontend and backend services. This approach avoids monolithic Backend APIs and Frontends bloated with business logic, making it easier to maintain and scale applications. By using WunderGraph's powerful code generation templates, developers can build typesafe BFFs with either GraphQL or TypeScript, cutting through boilerplate and achieving top-notch developer experience from start to finish.

We're hiring for Golang Developers, DevOps Engineers and Solution Architects to help build the next generation of API and Microservices infrastructure. The Neon integration with WunderGraph is now available, enabling seamless linking of Postgres databases and allowing developers to build apps at lightning-fast speed by leveraging serverless capabilities and auto-scaling features. With this integration, developers can create a 100% serverless stack for stateful apps, and connect their database with WunderGraph using TypeScript or GraphQL to expose operations to users. The company is excited about the integration and invites feedback from the community, offering support through its Discord channel.

The "Not Invented Here" (NIH) problem refers to the cognitive bias where individuals and organizations reject or undervalue external ideas and innovations in favor of internally developed solutions. This can lead to a lack of innovation, wasted resources, and missed growth opportunities. The NIH problem is often driven by pride, ownership, and fear of loss of control, as well as confirmation bias, groupthink, and the desire to maintain control over one's own work. To avoid this problem, it is essential to be open-minded, collaborate with others, and leverage existing solutions, such as open-source software. By following five rules - being smart by accepting you're not the smartest, not making it your baby, working in a startup environment, fostering an organization that embraces change, and encouraging developers to work on open-source projects - individuals and organizations can overcome the NIH challenge and foster innovation.

GraphQL is not dying, but its growth has slowed down. The technology found its use cases, but it was overhyped. GraphQL Federation is emerging as a critical standard for enterprise-level solutions, enabling seamless data sharing and collaboration across teams. REST is in a slow decline, while OpenAPI is steadily growing. tRPC is gaining popularity, but its question volume is still lower than that of GraphQL. The growth of APIs is not declining; instead, the industry is evolving, with new technologies like GraphQL Federation and tRPC pushing the boundaries of API management.

WunderGraph has acquired Apollo GraphQL to create a powerful new solution called Graphzilla, which combines the best of both companies' technologies to provide an unmatched GraphQL platform. By joining forces, WunderGraph and Apollo are creating a unified view of data from multiple sources, allowing for seamless integration and analysis of structured and unstructured data. Graphzilla is designed to be lightning-fast, thanks to its combination of Virtual Graph and SuperGraph, and will feature custom GraphQL solutions tailored to specific needs, providing a super-powered version of traditional GraphQL solutions. The platform's unified view of data makes it easier to analyze and understand complex data in real-time, and its speed will make work more efficient and productive.