/GraphQLConf 2025

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Amsterdam, Netherlands
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Ramnivas Laddad

GraphQL at the Edge with WebAssembly

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Skyline B-C - Level 21
BackendSession Presentations

Ramnivas Laddad

Co-founder, Exograph

Ramnivas leads the development of Exograph, a declarative approach to GraphQL backend written in Rust. He has led innovation in Spring Framework and Cloud Foundry since their beginning. Ramnivas is the author of AspectJ in Action, the best-selling book on aspect-oriented programming lauded by industry experts for its practical and innovative approach to real-world problems. He has spoken at leading industry conferences, including JavaOne, ScalaDays, SpringOne, and O'Reilly OSCON.

WebAssembly is reshaping our approach to software execution units and components. With its ecosystem maturing--the ability to deploy with multiple cloud providers, the standardization of WebAssembly Components, and the rise of WASI--its potential is fast becoming a reality. WebAssembly is especially suitable for running server-side code at the edge, where resource constraints and security concerns are paramount. To realize the full potential of running API servers at the edge--lowered latency, reduced costs, and improved scalability--we must rethink our approach to building and deploying servers. GraphQL is particularly well-suited for edge deployments. It not only reduces the number of trips between the client and the server but also allows implementations to optimize the whole query to reduce round trips to the data server. In this session, we will explore how to target a Rust implementation of GraphQL server to WebAssembly. We'll also look into how this fits within the WebAssembly ecosystem and how you can run these servers even in your browser.