Nader Dabit

Blockchains are databases with a unique set of properties. Unlike most databases which are optimized for both read and write operations, blockchains are optimized for write operations, typically focused on optimizing and scaling transaction cost, transaction volume, and transaction speed.
In this talk, I'll dive into the web3 space, and show how developers can leverage The Graph Protocol to build performant, scalable, and decentralized GraphQL APIs and dapps on decentralized networks like Ethereum and IPS.

Decentralized apps (dApps) are continuing to gain momentum in the industry. These developers are also now some of the highest paid in the entire trade. Building decentralized apps is a paradigm shift that requires a different way of thinking than apps built with traditional centralized infrastructure, tooling, and services – taking into consideration things like game theory, decentralized serverless infrastructure, and cryptoeconomics. As a React developer, I initially had a hard time understanding this entirely new (to me) ecosystem, how everything fit together, and the mental model needed to understand and be a productive full stack developer in this space (and why I would consider it in the first place). In this talk, I'll give a comprehensive overview of the space, how you can get started building these types of applications, and the entire tech stack broken apart then put back together to show how everything works.

One of the benefits of GraphQL is that it enables a single entry point into any number of back end service or databases. More and more companies are adopting cloud technologies – leading to more jobs, more money, and more opportunities in cloud computing. When GraphQL is integrated with a cloud back end, enabling secure and direct access to dozens of databases and managed services, the limitations are endless. The problem is often that building out these implementations from scratch, and getting them right, is hard. In this talk, I’ll show how you can build cloud-based GraphQL back ends connecting to multiple databases (SQL and NoSQL), serverless functions, machine learning services, and microservices using TypeScript, AppSync, and AWS CDK – and do so in fewer lines of code than you’d expect. We’ll also look at how subscriptions, security, caching, and authentication are all handled, enabling you to build APIs that can simultaneously connect to tens of millions of clients at once to offer true real-time applications at scale. By the end of the talk, you should feel comfortable knowing that you can become a cloud engineer using an existing GraphQL skillset.

In this talk I’ll show how we can use a combination of GraphQL SDL along with a new DSL (GraphQL Transform) created the Amplify team to build out a full stack cloud application directly from your GraphQL schema. Using this GraphQL DSL, we’ll walk through how to model a Database, authorization rules, relationships, and custom access patterns. We’ll look at how to rapidly prototype an example application, and view some demos including a voting app capable of handling over 100,000 operations per second.

CDK (Cloud development kit) enables developers to build cloud infrastructure using popular programming languages like Python, Typescript, or JavaScript. CDK is a next-level abstraction in infrastructure as code, allowing developers who were traditionally unfamiliar with cloud computing to build scalable APIs and web services using their existing skillset, and do so in only a few lines of code.
In this talk, you’ll learn how to use the TypeScript flavor of CDK to build a hyper-scalable real-time API with GraphQL, Lambda, DynamoDB, and AWS AppSync . At the end of the talk, I’ll live code an API from scratch in just a couple of minutes and then test out queries, mutations, and subscriptions.
By the end of the talk, you should have a good understanding of GraphQL, AppSync, and CDK and be ready to build an API in your next project using TypeScript and CDK.

GraphQL is being used in some really interesting ways in parts of the developer ecosystem that you may be surprised to hear about, including Ethereum as well as for building comprehensive graphs from various third party APIs. In this talk, I'll show how to use a similar approach to build a cloud programming interface into AWS with GraphQL and why using this approach makes sense coming from a front end developer looking to leverage their existing skillset.