As companies look for new ways to evolve their APIs, they inevitably end up comparing different ways to build them. As one of the newer technologies, GraphQL graph databases often come up in the conversation. REST, as one of the time-tested ways of developing an API, is also brought up. This leads to developers asking the difference between the two and which one is “better.” When it comes down to it, these are two very different things and there isn’t one that is necessarily better than the other. It often comes down to use cases when determining whether GraphQL or REST is right for you.
What is REST?
REST, or Representational State Transfer, is an architectural style for distributed hypermedia systems. It is primarily used to implement different web services. REST defines everything as a resource and uses a resource identifier to parse interactions.
What is a GraphQL Graph Database?
A GraphQL graph database is a query language and is highly customizable when developing an API. The nice thing about GraphQL is that it’s really good for companies that need an API that can quickly and consistently take in a high amount of queries and return specific, relevant data. GraphQL is also newer, so it’s rapidly evolving and developers are finding new ways to implement it. REST has been around for awhile, so people already have a pretty good handle on its capabilities. Click here for more information on GraphQL graph database.
What’s the Difference and What Should I Use?
If you’re looking for caching capabilities, then REST tends to handle that better and it’s primarily designed to handle hypermedia systems, so it can also be good for those. GraphQL works better when you need to make specific queries. REST always returns full sets of data, so it’s not as effective as this. Each of these have their own benefits and downsides and which one you use really depends on your specific needs. One isn’t always better than the other, but one might be better for some companies. In the end, they’re not meant to be interchangeable. They serve similar functions on the surface, but they’re quite different when it comes to functionality.
Read a similar article about scalable GraphQL here at this page.