BrainBlog for Nacelle by Jason Bloomberg
GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing data. GraphQL provides a complete and understandable description of the data in your API, gives clients the power to ask for exactly what they need and nothing more, makes it easier to evolve APIs over time, and enables powerful developer tools.
– GraphQL.org
Since Facebook released the GraphQL spec to the world in 2015, people’s opinions about it have been dramatically divided.
Giving clients the power to ask for what they need from servers – perhaps the most important phrase in the standard definition above – represents a paradigm shift in how software implements integration in distributed environments.
On the other hand, GraphQL’s detractors point out that implementations of the language fall short of its promise and that in real-world scenarios, performance and complexity limitations outweigh its strengths.
Both sides have a point. To get to the bottom of this controversy, we need to place GraphQL in context. How does it differ from integration paradigms that came before? What problems remain, and how can we solve them?
Read the entire BrainBlog here.
