tags: #publish
links: [[Software and Tech]]
created: 2020-09-10 Thu
---
# GraphQL
A graph data query, aggregation and manipulation language for APIs, and a runtime for fullfilling queries across multiple datasources.
Clients define the structure of the data to be returned (vs typical REST APIs which pre-define data formats, often including information not needed by a specific client).
The system has a single endpoint rather than an endpoint per API, using types and fields to define what to return.
Suitable for web APIs. Contrast with REST and other web services architectures.
**History:** Originally from Facebook, public in 2015, moved to a foundation in 2018.
## SRE topics
[[GraphQL is hard to monitor]]
[[GraphQL makes caching hard and has bad worst-case latency]]