Apollo GraphQL Launches Contracts to Expand Access to the Graph

November 10, 2021 at 11:30 AM EST

Dynamic new feature allows enterprise software teams to create tailored graphs for different audiences by applying filters to a single unified graph

Apollo GraphQL, the pioneer in the use of open source and commercial GraphQL API technologies, today announced at the annual GraphQL Summit the launch of Contracts, a dynamic new feature that allows enterprise software teams to create tailored graphs for different audiences by applying filters to a single unified graph.

At enterprise scale, the graph layer needs to serve many different audiences with different needs, different domains, and different scopes of access. Before the graph, an organization might accomplish this by maintaining multiple distinct APIs, with each one serving a separate audience ranging from external partner developers to an internal mobile client team. These disparate APIs provide a custom experience for each audience but must be manually maintained resulting in slower app development and more overhead.

With Contracts, graph platform teams can now offer a tailored experience for client audiences while maintaining all of the benefits of the graph.

“The graph is an essential new layer of the software stack that unifies all services into a single source of truth and is becoming the standard for cutting-edge teams developing applications,” said Matt DeBergalis, co-founder and CTO of Apollo GraphQL, which provides the industry’s only unified graph platform. “Multiple Fortune 500 companies already trust Apollo technology to operate their graph, and companies of that scale often have hundreds of client applications and thousands of developers all consuming different subsets of data from the graph. Rather than exposing the entire graph to every internal and external developer, Contracts allow you to streamline the experience by creating an individual graph for each audience which contains a filtered subset of the unified graph.”

Contracts are powered by a flexible tagging and filtering system, enabling many use cases. Graph platform teams can use Contracts to expose specific and relevant parts of the graph to partner developers; filter to only the relevant fields for internal client developers to find the data they need; restrict access to experimental parts of the graph while still allowing for testing and use by early adopters; and create varying access levels for different personas in multi-sided marketplaces without exposing the entire graph. All of this helps users adopt and maintain a product mindset by designing schemas that suit both customers and client developers' needs.

The unified graph is a key differentiator for organizations leveraging GraphQL. However, before Contracts, all developers had the same experience on the unified graph. Now, with Contracts, platform teams can create filters to deliver a tailored experience for multiple different audiences.

Apollo also recently announced the latest version of Federation, an open architecture designed to empower enterprises and high-growth organizations to implement and orchestrate GraphQL services at scale. With Federation 2, organizations both small and large can use Federation to unify their services into a single graph to deliver apps faster and streamline multi-team collaboration.

To learn more about Contracts, please read our blog post here.

About Apollo GraphQL

Apollo GraphQL is the leader in open source and commercial GraphQL technologies. Apollo helps engineering teams build unified graphs to accelerate application development and deliver better, more cohesive experiences. Apollo's open-source GraphQL client, server, and gateway are downloaded more than 17M times per month and used in production by over 30% of the Fortune 500. Customers like Walmart, Expedia, Glassdoor, Audi, and PayPal, use the Apollo Graph Platform to unify their GraphQL efforts, collaborate on graph development, and safely iterate on their graphs. Based in San Francisco, Apollo is backed by Insight Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Matrix Partners, and Trinity Ventures. Learn more at: https://www.apollographql.com.