GraphQLConf’23
With 4 bol members (Product Tech Leads and Software Engineer) of the GraphQL Stewardship we’ve attended the GraphQLConf’23. The conference was a great experience with high quality workshops and talks on GraphQL and its latest development in the open and warm welcoming GraphQL community. We are thrilled to see the latest development within the GraphQL Community which will help us greatly in adopting GraphQL within bol.
Great keynotes!
Let’s first get started with the keynotes. I highly recommended the following keynote by Marc-Andre Giroux (Netflix & TSC member). Get a whirlwind and the history of GraphQL in the past 8 years. This keynote gives a great brief history of the evolution of GraphQL since 2015 and what we can expect now and next! From REST to GraphQL, to distributed GraphQL at scale and concepts as Code-First vs Schema-First, API design and consistency at scale with GraphQL.
And a great follow-up by Keith Babo on the evolution of GraphQL with examples of Application Networking patterns.
High-quality talks
Here a shortlist of talks I highly recommend watching - from new announcements and new development on such as GraphQL open specifications, query planning to @defer and nullability.
GraphQL Fusion – new open specification for distributed GraphQL
Michael Staib (ChilliCream & TSC member) gave a great sneak peak in the new open specification called GraphQL Fusion for distributed GraphQL. This is exciting new development could be the future how distributed new GraphQL Gateway can be composed. GraphQL Fusion is presented as an alternative for Stitching, Mesh and Apollo Federation – and most important is that it will be created based on an new open standard for distributed GraphQL.
Announcement of Grafast - a new Execution Engine for GraphQL
Benjie Gillam (Graphile & TSC member) presents Grafast V.0.1.0 … the next phase to improve and optimize GraphQL query planning and over-fetching?
Your nullable sandwich to the max
Do you want to know all about nullability in GraphQL watch this talk by Stephan Spalding – how your sandwich and all its toppings can be null.
Get a glimpse into future with @Defer
Currently in Stage 2 Draft Proposal (https://github.com/graphql/graphql-spec/pull/742) of the Graphql spec. In this lightning talk Alessia Belissario (Apollo GraphQL) showcase the usecase of @Defer as an experimental implementation.
Conclusion
GraphQLConf’23 is a high-quality conference. A great conference where you can meet the contributors of the open-source projects, toolings, products for GraphQL and meet the TSC members in person. Looking back from where GraphQL has been in 2017, when I first started with GraphQL and now, I’m excited where the community is heading with the open specification on GraphQL in distribution.
The conference has been a wonderful experience, the GraphQL community is open and has full energy to lift GraphQL into its next phase . I’m excited to bring all my new GraphQL learnings back to bol, and I’m looking forward to the next edition - GraphQLConf’24!