alt title: Surviving Change Without Breaking Everything When we launched our new GraphQL API at Netflix, it felt perfect—destined to power hundreds of millions of devices. Yet, change is inevitable. Even if your schema seems flawless today (which it isn't), requirements will shift, new features will emerge, and regrets will follow. GraphQL promises evolvability, allowing us to move forward without multiple API versions. But how does this hold up in practice? We mark fields as @deprecated, but what happens next? How can we embrace experimentation without entombing technical debt in the API? Does federation complicate things? Evolving your schema without breaking clients is easy, right? Right?? Drawing from experience with the Netflix API, this talk explores techniques for evolving your schema safely and painlessly. We'll cover the schema lifecycle—from experimentation to design, deprecation, and deletion. Attendees will leave with: - Schema design principles that facilitate change - Practical techniques for evolving GraphQL schemas - Strategies for managing a deprecation workflow Join us as we learn to face the inevitability of change with confidence and serenity.
Netflix, Engineer
Stephen is a member of the Edge API team at Netflix and a GraphQL TSC emeritus. His team develops and operates the Netflix API platform. This is the nexus point where hundreds of microservices are aggregated into a single API that delivers the Netflix experience for the hundreds of millions of Netflix devices worldwide.
Join three transformative days of expert insights and innovation to shape the next decade of APIs!