3factor app - Realtime GraphQL

We begin to twitch as we review the first factor of Hasura’s 3factor app, Realtime GraphQL, while Allen gets distrac … SQUIRREL!, Michael might own some bell bottoms, and Joe is stuck with cobalt.

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3factor app and the First Factor

3factor app

• The 3factor app is a modern architecture for full stack applications, described by the folks at Hasura.
• High feature velocity and scalability from the start:
  • Real time GraphQL
  • Reliable eventing
  • Async serverless
• Kinda boils down to …
  • Have an API gateway (for them, GraphQL).
  • Store state in a (most likely distributed) store.
  • Have services interact with state via an event system.
• Versus how did we used to do things using a REST API for each individual entity.
  • Let’s be honest though. We probably created a single very specialized REST API for a particular page all in the name of performance. But it was only used for that page.
• Related technologies:
  • Web Sockets
  • Serverless
  • Lambda / Kappa – Types Streaming architectures
  • Event based architectures
  • Microservices

Factor 1 – Realtime GraphQL

Use Realtime GraphQL as the Data API Layer

• Must be low-latency.
  • Less than 100 ms is ideal.
• Must support subscriptions.
  • Allows the application to consume information from the GraphQL API in real-time.

Some Comparisons to Typical Backend API Calls

Traditional application	3factor application
Uses REST calls.	Uses GraphQL API.
May require multiple calls to retrieve all data (customer, order, order details) – OR a complex purpose built call that will return all three in one call.	Uses GraphQL query to return data needed in a single call defined by the caller.
Uses something like Swagger to