Workshop: Beyond GraphQL Federation: How We Use Composite Schemas and WebAssembly to Federate Non-GraphQL Data Sources

Session description

In this workshop, we will look at different patterns to integrate various data sources in a federated graph using the Apollo Federation V2 spec, the Composite Schemas spec, WebAssembly with the recently released Component Model, and the Grafbase Gateway. GraphQL Federation is a fantastic pattern to combine APIs — called subgraphs — into a single schema while sharing types and declaratively depending from data from other subgraphs. In fact, it is too good to keep it to GraphQL subgraphs only — what if you could bring other kinds of APIs and data sources into your federated graph without having to write a dedicated GraphQL server in front of them? In the course of the hands-on workshop, we will:

• Integrate a REST API, a Postgres database and a Kafka instance using open source extensions,
• Use the gRPC extension and the MCP server to understand, integrate and query gRPC services over GraphQL,
• Build a new custom extension together

The result will be a functioning GraphQL federated graph without GraphQL subgraphs, demonstrating that federation as a mechanism is useful beyond just GraphQL subgraphs.