Putting a dataloader in front of batch APIs usually works okay. You end up with round trips but they're 1+1 and inside the data centre. I've used AST traversal

Putting a dataloader in front of batch APIs usually works okay. You end up with round trips but they're 1+1 and inside the data centre. I've used AST traversal to compute joins a couple of fields ahead + custom resolvers that only load their data if it wasn't loaded by the parent, but I don't think that's necessary to get decent performance and I wouldn't do it again unless there was a real business need. I agree that genericity is often the opposite of specialisation. I disagree that it's a heavy price. REST is pretty general. To my mind specialist APIs are things like streaming video, file uploads, anything that relies on caching in an intermediate layer, etc. and these are all examples of where you'd follow the established standards and add some RESTful routes/services. I don't think it's sacrilege to upload files in a different way to how you load your user dashboard or your interface for editing project permissions.