3 ms·

I think it's simple. You can get the best performance with REST, but you have to really put lots of resources into it. On the other hand, with constraint resou

I think it's simple. You can get the best performance with REST, but you have to really put lots of resources into it. On the other hand, with constraint resources, you likely end up with better performance when using graphql because of the reduction of requests and decreased latency. In most cases, graphql hits the sweet spot.

victor106 3y ago
> reduction of requests and decreased latency. How? GQL still depends on an API or a database, isn’t it? And depending on where that Api or DB is located in relation to the calling user/app latency is still going to be the same? What am I missing here? If you are implying that GQL somehow intelligently caches data, then all the issues with cache invalidation etc still would apply, correct? The problem with some of these debates about GQL vs Rest us that you have people either saying GQL is great or bad and same with REST. I wish there is someone that breaks it down and truly explains the pros and cons of each.
- devjab 3y ago
  I think that it might be because the difference is mostly in how we work together. With GQL your frontend and backend engineers are always happy, with Rest they are always at each others throats to deliver. This is because GQL gives your teams the tools they want. On the frontend you get the data access without ever having to talk with your backend, on the backend you get the load data without ever having to talk with your frontend. So both your frontend and your backend can focus on what they do best without ever talking with eachother. Obviously that's not exactly how it works, but if you give your frontend engineers the full query abilities of GQL and your backend the ability to monitor and then fix bottlenecks through the GQL load tools you simply remove a lot of the conflict zones in modern development. You can do everything you can with GQL with Rest, but you're not going to want to do it. And speaking from experience, you're not going to want to do it with Odata either unless Microsoft magically improves the experience after 10 years of it sucking.
  - andrewprock 3y ago
    [flagged]
- valenterry 3y ago
  You are right, but you are missing the frontend part. e.g. frontend says "backend, give me the users". Then later, for every user it says "backend, given me the users favourite images". However, with graphql the frontend can say "backend, give me the users and include each favourites images". Even if the way to retrieve it from the database is the same for the backend, there is still reduced latency because it is only frontend->backend->db (users)->backend->db (images)->backend->frontend instead of frontend->backend->db (users)->backend->frontend->backend->db (images)->backend->frontend

victor106 3y ago

> reduction of requests and decreased latency. How? GQL still depends on an API or a database, isn’t it? And depending on where that Api or DB is located in relation to the calling user/app latency is still going to be the same? What am I missing here? If you are implying that GQL somehow intelligently caches data, then all the issues with cache invalidation etc still would apply, correct? The problem with some of these debates about GQL vs Rest us that you have people either saying GQL is great or bad and same with REST. I wish there is someone that breaks it down and truly explains the pros and cons of each.

devjab 3y ago
I think that it might be because the difference is mostly in how we work together. With GQL your frontend and backend engineers are always happy, with Rest they are always at each others throats to deliver. This is because GQL gives your teams the tools they want. On the frontend you get the data access without ever having to talk with your backend, on the backend you get the load data without ever having to talk with your frontend. So both your frontend and your backend can focus on what they do best without ever talking with eachother. Obviously that's not exactly how it works, but if you give your frontend engineers the full query abilities of GQL and your backend the ability to monitor and then fix bottlenecks through the GQL load tools you simply remove a lot of the conflict zones in modern development. You can do everything you can with GQL with Rest, but you're not going to want to do it. And speaking from experience, you're not going to want to do it with Odata either unless Microsoft magically improves the experience after 10 years of it sucking.
- andrewprock 3y ago
  [flagged]
valenterry 3y ago
You are right, but you are missing the frontend part. e.g. frontend says "backend, give me the users". Then later, for every user it says "backend, given me the users favourite images". However, with graphql the frontend can say "backend, give me the users and include each favourites images". Even if the way to retrieve it from the database is the same for the backend, there is still reduced latency because it is only frontend->backend->db (users)->backend->db (images)->backend->frontend instead of frontend->backend->db (users)->backend->frontend->backend->db (images)->backend->frontend