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Why we created Taxi, and why we felt the need for another schema language

orbitalhq.com

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Re: Why we created Taxi, and why we felt the need for another schema language

#11

Post by gavinray »

martypitt wrote: post #9
obi1kenobi wrote: post #2

I've had my eye on Taxi for a while, and it's neat! I agree that the problems it aims to solve are real and painful in real life. In my experience, I'm not sure people care about schemas or schema languages — they are just implementation details best left under the hood. This is why in my own work, I started on the query end of the spectrum instead. This is why I built Trustfall, a query engine able to query any data…

I agree that querying is where the real value is at, and Trustfall looks like an elegant approach. While Taxi is all about documenting & augmenting specs, Orbital is the query engine (which is a bit similar to Trustfall) that consumes those specs. Orbital's goal is to allow consumers to be able to query for data, without having to be aware of the specifics of the data sets / APIs / DBs, etc they're composing together…

  > GraphQL does a nice job on the query side of keeping consumers away from the wiring, but shifts the obligation to middleware resolvers.
I'm not sure that I understand how Orbital is different from tools that autogenerate GraphQL API's on top of data sources like databases and API's.

From the site, it reads:

  > "Orbital uses your existing API specs and Database schemas - enriched with Taxi metadata to describe links. Orbital turns this into rich API and data catalog, letting you explore all your data, and how it connects."
It sounds like the same concept, except using a new language instead of GraphQL?

The schema language looks very similar to something AWS has called Smithy by the way:

- https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/developer/introducing-smithy-id...

- https://smithy.io/2.0/index.html

Re: Why we created Taxi, and why we felt the need for another schema language

#12

Post by martypitt »

gavinray wrote: post #11
martypitt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that querying is where the real value is at, and Trustfall looks like an elegant approach. While Taxi is all about documenting & augmenting specs, Orbital is the query engine (which is a bit similar to Trustfall) that consumes those specs. Orbital's goal is to allow consumers to be able to query for data, without having to be aware of the specifics of the data sets / APIs / DBs, etc they're composing together…

> GraphQL does a nice job on the query side of keeping consumers away from the wiring, but shifts the obligation to middleware resolvers. I'm not sure that I understand how Orbital is different from tools that autogenerate GraphQL API's on top of data sources like databases and API's. From the site, it reads: > "Orbital uses your existing API specs and Database schemas - enriched with Taxi metadata to describe links.…

Autogen tools do a nice job of creating GraphQL schemas from a single source.

We're looking more at how to compose / stitch multiple sources into a single queryable API. (ie., Stitch data from a DB, some REST APIs, and a Kafka topic).

In GraphQL, you need to write / maintain resolvers that handle the stitching for you - which means as upstream data sources change, resolvers need to be maintained too.

Smithy is nice, and we'll probably add first-class support in Orbital for it at some point. Taxi was around before Smithy, so we're the OG :)

Re: Why we created Taxi, and why we felt the need for another schema language

#13

Post by philipodonnell »

> Taxi shifts the obligation of describing how things stitch together from Consumers to Producers. Traditionally, it falls to consumers to work out how to do this. And, it’s an expensive question to answer… it involves tracking down API specs, reading docs, and building a mental model of how things hang together.

I work on enterprise data platforms and this project sounds very much like the "data mesh" concept where responsibility for defining metadata/usability of datasets is supposed to rest with the teams producing the datasets rather than the teams consuming datasets. The same criticism probably applies:

* Even though it is expensive/slow for a consumer to figure out how to use data, it is even more expensive/slow to have producers try to continuously anticipate the needs of all possible current and future consumers, rather than focus on their system and have actual consumers figure out how to use the subset of data they need as it changes.

* Above a Dunbar-esque-sized organization you can no longer rely on empathy to encourage producers to expend extra effort on consumer's needs, so either monetary or disciplinary encouragement is needed, both of which raise costs even further.

Is there a name for this kind of paradox? When an approach will work only in a company below a certain size/complexity/age, but that kind of company probably doesn't feel the pain enough to need the approach?

Re: Why we created Taxi, and why we felt the need for another schema language

#15

Post by martypitt »

philipodonnell wrote: post #13

> Taxi shifts the obligation of describing how things stitch together from Consumers to Producers. Traditionally, it falls to consumers to work out how to do this. And, it’s an expensive question to answer… it involves tracking down API specs, reading docs, and building a mental model of how things hang together. I work on enterprise data platforms and this project sounds very much like the "data mesh" concept where…

> it is even more expensive/slow to have producers try to continuously anticipate the needs of all possible current and future consumers

I agree, but I don't think Taxi encourages that. (I sure hope it doesn't).

All that's really happening is defining a system-agnostic set of terms, embedding those in producer schemas, and then letting consumers using those same terms to ask for data.

Those terms can be used to automate integration, and in many (but not all) cases, alleviate the need for low-value plumbing code.

Semantic Metadata is a growing trend in the data ecosystem (cube.dev is doing a nice job here too). The Agile folks have had Ubiquitous Language as a first class concept since day dot.

> an approach will work only in a company below a certain size/complexity/age I think that GraphQL federation is an example of mid-to-large companies trying to solve the federation problem, suggesting they both feel the pain, and are looking for solutions.

Re: Why we created Taxi, and why we felt the need for another schema language

#16

Post by mst »

martypitt wrote: post #15
philipodonnell wrote: post #13

> Taxi shifts the obligation of describing how things stitch together from Consumers to Producers. Traditionally, it falls to consumers to work out how to do this. And, it’s an expensive question to answer… it involves tracking down API specs, reading docs, and building a mental model of how things hang together. I work on enterprise data platforms and this project sounds very much like the "data mesh" concept where…

> it is even more expensive/slow to have producers try to continuously anticipate the needs of all possible current and future consumers I agree, but I don't think Taxi encourages that. (I sure hope it doesn't). All that's really happening is defining a system-agnostic set of terms, embedding those in producer schemas, and then letting consumers using those same terms to ask for data. Those terms can be used to autom…

The goals of Taxi feel at least somewhat like 'creating a domain driven design style Ubiquitous Language to describe data and relationships' and the deliberate not-forcing-a-single-global-thing seems like it'll at least make it harder for enterprise dysfunction to bend it into having the failure modes the grandparent describes.

Re: Why we created Taxi, and why we felt the need for another schema language

#17

Post by [deleted] »

martypitt wrote: post #7
hhthrowaway1230 wrote: post #6

i love how graphql described its types in its dsl, thats one of things id love to see carried over in other schema formats. it looks like taxi tries to do this to some extend

A descriptive type system is a big part of what makes Taxi work. We took a lot of inspiration from GraphQL (because it's awesome), but I actually think we go further in the type system than GraphQL.

[deleted]
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