GraphQL has emerged as a prominent talking point in the API landscape: its early success at Facebook, rapid adoption by other leading tech companies, and burgeoning open source community make it one of the most exciting new topics in our industry. But just as with any major milestone, GraphQL offers us a few practical questions to consider hand-in-hand with its advantages.

On one hand, overwhelmingly enthusiastic endorsements from highly respected developers and open source product vendors make GraphQL an easy train to hop aboard. On the other hand, these same figureheads have occasionally positioned GraphQL as an outright replacement for REST which may be cause for concern.

Curiously, traditional enterprise commentators like Gartner and Forrester haven’t yet shed much insight into GraphQL, and support from traditional API Management vendors is limited at best. GraphQL as an enterprise topic can therefore feel like a bit of a gray area. At Arvata our goal is to help you understand firstly why you might implement GraphQL, and secondly how you might approach this as part of your organization’s broader API strategy.

In this talk we’ll:

• Give a brief introduction to GraphQL
• Address common misconceptions about security, performance and implementation architecture
• Explore the factors that have contributed to the success of GraphQL in early adopters
• Analyse the patterns and challenges that organisations should be cognisant when considering a GraphQL implementation
• Offer our vision of GraphQL’s role in helping your enterprise realize it’s full potential in the API Economy