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I agree. Sometimes it seems like GraphQL degenerates into a generic REST API where you construct and pass the SQL directly from the client.

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Another way to put that is to say that GraphQL is just a way to ship your raw DB schema as JSON. I thought we learned it was bad to shape your front-end code to the mirror the DB schema, sometime back in the early dot-com era.

But the entities, names, dates, and photo URLs in my database are exactly what I want to show on the frontend, by and large. Maybe a join, aggregation, or something in there.

Right, but now when you are deciding on a schema change, your front ends clients are going to break because you didn’t create an API, the just allowed db querying from the front end.

Web API contracts are primarily routes and request/response data structures. This allows front end and backend concerns to be separate which allows a lot more flexibility over time for both front end and backend developers. From my limited knowledge of GraphQL, this is still possible but more work than just exposing your db schema types/DTOs.

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