Highlights: 

  • The supergraph does away with the task of sourcing and orchestrating data, fine-grained APIs, microservices, and different client applications during the app development process.

Apollo GraphQL, a data management startup, announced the release of Apollo GraphOS, the world’s first end-to-end platform to build, connect, and scale any supergraph. It aims to make it easier for developers to work with data. GraphOS is the execution fabric for the supergraph – a powerful runtime that connects backend and frontend systems in a modular way. It provides both self-hosted and cloud-hosted routing, so users can choose to run the supergraph in the cloud and build without having to set up or configure their infrastructure in a complicated way.

Key features include:

  • Cloud-hosted or self-hosted routing for supergraphs with Federation built in. Everything can be connected in one graph with faster supergraph runtime.
  • Latest GraphQL capabilities: Newer features like @defer, live queries, and edge caching provide the developers with the much-needed power and flexibility to develop a new generation of apps.
  • For changes, there’s just one common source of truth for schemas and delivery pipelines. Just ensure all developers are abreast with the latest schema changes and corroborate changes against past client operations before they go for production.

Matt DeBergalis, Apollo’s CTO and co-founder, said, “The supergraph is built to solve the needs of application developers – to give them the flexibility and resources they need to build amazing experiences without the complexity and friction that constantly gets in the way. We’ve seen industry consensus that the supergraph meets those needs – some of the world’s biggest and most forward-thinking companies are using it. With GraphOS, we’re removing the complexity of operating a supergraph while giving everyone an easy onramp to experience the benefits of having one.”

Furthermore, GraphOS will soon be able to connect supergraphs outside organizational firewalls. Building modern apps requires connecting different third-party APIs, such as partners, payment services, content management systems, or public APIs. This is usually done manually, one at a time, through REST connections. GraphOS lays the groundwork for the creation of a “global supergraph” that is basically a marketplace for developers who can use it to find any data they need in a single query.

Geoff Schmidt, Apollo’s CEO and co-founder, said, “If supergraphs are about connecting everything together, and if organizations around the world are building supergraphs, developers should be able to connect data and services beyond what’s available to them inside their company.”

Schmidt, Apollo’s CEO and co-founder. “When those global connections are made, the supergraph becomes a window into the world’s data – a new fabric for the internet that everyone can access and use to build and create whatever they want. It has become a global, decentralized, collective resource like the World Wide Web.

Schmidt said, “Imagine a world where developers had any data and capability available to them, from sources all over the world, that they could use, remix and use again. It would fundamentally change what it means to build digital experiences. App development would become a much more human-centric discipline based on people’s needs, rather than the financial outcomes of the companies building the apps.”

In May, Apollo introduced the supergraph, a GraphQL architecture that creates a network of a company’s data, microservices, and digital capabilities. This allows product and engineering teams to create amazing experiences as fast as they can think of them.

The supergraph does away with the task of sourcing and orchestrating data, fine-grained APIs, microservices, and different client applications during the app development process. The supergraph enables and automates organization-wide composability, which leads to better performance and a nearly infinite number of ways to quickly orchestrate and recombine business domain models to meet future needs at any scale.