Debunking GraphQL Myths and Misconceptions

This article debunks common myths and misconceptions about GraphQL, a query language used in web development. The first myth is that GraphQL allows clients to perform arbitrary queries, which is true during the development phase but restricted in production with allow lists or persisted queries. The second myth is that GraphQL is similar to SQL for graph databases, but it's actually designed to model and execute semantics as a tree structure. The third myth is that GraphQL servers are hard to build and maintain, which can be resolved by using engines like Hasura to automatically build the API based on data modeling. The fourth myth is that GraphQL has the N+1 query problem, but this issue can be mitigated with dataloader batching or efficient tools like Hasura. The fifth myth is that GraphQL is unnecessarily complex for small teams, but it becomes more valuable as a project grows and requires richly connected data across different sources. Lastly, the article addresses the concern about caching in GraphQL, stating that while it can be tricky, proper client and server-side caching strategies can be implemented with existing tooling.