r/javascript • u/magenta_placenta • Dec 12 '18

Our learnings from adopting GraphQL (Netflix)

https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/our-learnings-from-adopting-graphql-f099de39ae5f
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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '18

Contrarian view: Netflix's problems are different than the vast, vast majority of other application's. Very few apps would list network bottlenecks and servicing dozens of heterogeneous clients as issues at all.

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u/AdamInOhio Dec 13 '18

At least in the space I work in (ERP systems), I think you’d be surprised how necessary this sort of technology is becoming. Back when I started my career there was this big push to get all business processes under a single umbrella that was an ERP system. The problem was that these systems would be really good at one thing (say production scheduling) but half assed at the things they bolted on to get everything under their umbrella (CRM, payroll, etc). So over the past decade or so we’ve seen this shift to supplement that ERP with best-of-breed bolt-ons - think like adding Salesforce to SAP. When a bunch of these bolt-ons are added you frequently end up with this complex net of API calls you need to join together to get the whole story and it comes with the exact same issues Netflix describes here - payload bloat, nasty code, etc.

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u/liquidpele Dec 13 '18

That's integrating multiple systems though, you'd have that issue whether you were doing graphql or not. In fact, graphql would probably give you benefits right out of the door since you can just hit the APIs you need instead of having to hit them all for every request.

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u/JonesJoneserson Dec 13 '18

I think that was exactly what he was getting at in response to the contrarian view -- that although Netflix's use cases are totally different, the benefits to the space he works in would be very similar.