Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#21

Post by i_phish_cats » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 11:35 PM UTC

degyves wrote: post #13

Great. Another solution for an already-solved, already-standardized query API language (SPARQL).

SPARQL demands a certain data model (triple stores). Also, everything about it smells like ivory-tower academic snobbery + ultra-large-enterprise crap. GraphQL does neither.

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#22

Post by rboyd » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 11:36 PM UTC

lsh wrote: post #15

degyves wrote: post #13

Great. Another solution for an already-solved, already-standardized query API language (SPARQL).

Fellow curmudgeon, I give you an upvote. SPARQL is a more elegant tool from a more civilised time.

that's awesome -- y'all are like the tech version of the Mad Max War Boys. sacrificed yourselves betting on the wrong tech.

witness me!

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#23

Post by lsh » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 11:38 PM UTC

rboyd wrote: post #22

lsh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellow curmudgeon, I give you an upvote. SPARQL is a more elegant tool from a more civilised time.

that's awesome -- y'all are like the tech version of the Mad Max War Boys. sacrificed yourselves betting on the wrong tech. witness me!

... ?

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#24

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 11:40 PM UTC

jmeyer2k wrote: post #3

tw1010 wrote: post #2

Oh great, an ad that covers the entire page on mobile. Guess I'm not reading this article then.

I don't think they care if you read the article. They just care that you saw the ad.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#25

Post by vjeux » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 11:43 PM UTC

xrd wrote: post #6

I remember when I was at RealNetworks a long time ago and Microsoft and Real were competing over the future of multimedia languages (SMIL vs HTML+Time). I was on some of the standardization committees and remember being surprised when some of my colleagues suggested that standardization was used by companies like MS to slow down the innovation process (and catch up to faster starts like RealNetworks had made). I wond…

Lee Byron who was one of the founders of GraphQL and has been actively driving its success in Open Source left Facebook recently (after a very long tenure). Making GraphQL part of a foundation is likely a way for him to be able to keep stewarding the project. He wrote a post with a bit more context: https://medium.com/@leeb/introducing-the-graphql-foundation-...

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#26

Post by aikah » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 11:49 PM UTC

atombender wrote: post #19

degyves wrote: post #13

Great. Another solution for an already-solved, already-standardized query API language (SPARQL).

GraphQL isn't a query language, it's an API protocol language. Big difference.

Well it is a query language, QL stands for query language.

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#27

Post by degyves » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 11:54 PM UTC

i_phish_cats wrote: post #21

degyves wrote: post #13

Great. Another solution for an already-solved, already-standardized query API language (SPARQL).

SPARQL demands a certain data model (triple stores). Also, everything about it smells like ivory-tower academic snobbery + ultra-large-enterprise crap. GraphQL does neither.

GraphQL also demands a certain data model. Just that it is not standardized. And no, RDF/XML is not the only representation for SPARQL. It can deal also with JSON.

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#28

Post by degyves » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 11:57 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #16

degyves wrote: post #13

Great. Another solution for an already-solved, already-standardized query API language (SPARQL).

GraphQL is not a generic query API language. One of the most unfortunate things about GraphQL is the presence of "QL" in the name makes people think it is somehow comparable to SQL or SPARQL.

Maybe because it IS a query language? From the website: "GraphQL is a query language for your API"... just that it is _not_ a standardized API, so we won't take advantage of HATEOAS.

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#29

Post by atombender » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 11:57 PM UTC

aikah wrote: post #26

atombender wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GraphQL isn't a query language, it's an API protocol language. Big difference.

Well it is a query language, QL stands for query language.

The name doesn't make it so. It defines a syntax and a single operator (nesting), but nothing else. You can't use it to "query" arbitrary data sources in the sense that other query languages such as SQL do, since there are no operators, functions, subqueries/arbitrary joins etc. It's an alternative to REST, not SQL.

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#30

Post by degyves » Tue, Nov 06, 2018, 11:57 PM UTC

atombender wrote: post #19

degyves wrote: post #13

Great. Another solution for an already-solved, already-standardized query API language (SPARQL).

GraphQL isn't a query language, it's an API protocol language. Big difference.

From the website: "GraphQL is a query language for your API"