Product / For Developers

It's Like Beaming:
GraphQL In, JSON Out, Skipping SQL.

Universal GraphQL API

Advantages of GraphQL Compared to REST:

• Increased efficiency
  GraphQL allows clients to request only the data they need, reducing network overhead and improving performance.
• Improved developer experience
  With GraphQL, developers have more control over the data they receive and can avoid over-fetching and under-fetching problems that can occur with REST.
• Strong typing
  GraphQL's type system provides a powerful way to validate and document the API, which can improve developer productivity and reduce errors.
• Better versioning and backwards compatibility
  Because clients can specify the exact data they need, changes to the API schema don't break client code.
• Increased flexibility
  GraphQL allows for more flexible queries, simplifying client-side logic and reducing the number of API endpoints needed.
• Easier to learn and use
  While REST can be complex and challenging to learn, GraphQL is often easier for developers to understand and use.

GraphQL Compiler

basebox' unique GraphQL compiler makes our GraphQL server exceptionally versatile.

The compiler is run during the installation or update of your project and converts your GraphQL schema file to a set of SQL template files for mutations and queries. basebox then uses these templates to translate GraphQL operations/requests into SQL queries, supporting automatic SQL joins to reduce database roundtrips to a minimum.

The benefits of this approach are:

• Execution speed
  Avoid unnecessary database roundtrips through automatic SQL joins. This is a considerable performance boost since database I/O is usually the most expensive part of each request.
• Implementation speed
  No need to write resolver functions for many queries and mutations.

In your query, you describe what information you want to get. basebox converts your GraphQL request to SQL, sends it to the database, and responds with GraphQL-compliant JSON.

Want to learn more about the benefits of having a GraphQL compiler? Read our Whitepaper:

Performance Benefits

When serving API requests, database I/O is by far the most expensive (time-consuming) part so we can expect a significant performance gain by

• avoiding unnecessary database hits altogether
• JOINing queries whenever possible (see this article).

basebox' GraphQL compiler achieves both goals.

Additional benefits:

• Reduced attack surface
  basebox minimizes the amount of custom code you need to write and maintain. In particular, you don't have to write resolvers anymore. Less code reduces the number of potential vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit.

• Input validation
  The GraphQL to SQL compiler uses the strong typing of the GraphQL schema to validate input and ensure that the API only accepts valid data. This helps prevent injection attacks, a common type of security vulnerability.

• Rate limiting
  Rate limiting prevents malicious clients from flooding the API with excessive requests.

• Optimized SQL queries
  By generating optimized SQL queries, the compiler outperforms manually-written resolvers.

• Simplicity
  The GraphQL to SQL compiler allows you to write GraphQL queries rather than SQL code, which is more intuitive and easier to comprehend.