HACKER Q&A
📣 bruchim

GraphQL Performance Issues, Am I the Only One?


We've recently made the leap to GraphQL for our APIs, attracted by its promise of more efficient and flexible data retrieval. The initial transition was smooth, and the benefits were immediately apparent. But, we've since hit a bit of a snag concerning performance.

We already implemented some of the recommended practices, like data loaders and simple expiration-based caching, but we're still in search of that significant breakthrough in optimization. The improvements, while beneficial, haven't been the game-changer we hoped for.

Does anyone talk about the elephant in the room? our app performance sucks, we need help.

Any insight? advice?

  👤 uberman Accepted Answer ✓
From our experience graphql made semi technical users more productive from a query perspective but at a cost of literally everything else. Data loading, security, schema building, responders, performance, n+1, and on and on.

We would never do it again if we could.

👤 bhaney
It's impossible to give you advice on performance improvement without knowing why your performance sucks, and that's not a conversation that's reasonably going to happen here. I can't even tell from what you've posted if migrating to GraphQL degraded your perf and you're looking for a solution to get it back, or if GraphQL improved your perf but not as much as you wanted.

Ultimately if your app performance sucks and you need help, then hire people who can help.

👤 amtamt
> We already implemented some of the recommended practices...

Looks like these recommended practices did not include benchmark the queries and DB for the workload. And 99.99% there was no person with performance engineering mindset was involved (or was/ were completely ignored)