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Forgive me if I am simply uninitiated, but what are the general advantages of graphQL over a typical backend powered by a SQL database?

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Hey thats a great question! These things are actually not mutually exclusive. You can think of GraphQL as REST 2.0. GraphQL provides a type system and standardized query language that make it much easier to consume APIs from the perspective of the client application. For example, the GraphQL language itself is very powerful and essentially eliminates the need of SDKs making GraphQL a great choice for any platform including embedded systems, VR, and more. GraphQL does not make any assumptions about where your data lives however. In fact, we run multiple databases (including SQL) each of which serves a specific purpose and we are able to expose all them to you via GraphQL. This is also how we are able to pull in things like Stripe, Algolia, Push Notifications and more into the same API that powers the rest of your application.

One of the biggest promises of GraphQL is in its ability to consolidate disparate data and this I think is how we are going to stand out from the BaaS platforms that have come before us. This is just the beginning. The GraphQL type system opens up so many possibilities in the types of developer tools that people can build. Apollo (http://www.apollodata.com/) is already building amazing tools and expect to see more from many more companies.

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