Join us for an overview of AWS AppSync, a fully managed GraphQL service, and listen as Tom Bray, Chief Architect at Ticketmaster, shares his experience of deploying GraphQL. Tom will highlight the challenges of switching from REST to GraphQL, the benefits Ticketmaster has realized, and the new capabilities that GraphQL has unlocked.

1. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
Accelerating Mobile App Data Synchronization and Real-Time Data
Development with GraphQL
John Burry, Specialist Solutions Architect
AWS
Tom Bray, Chief Architect
Ticketmaster

2. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
The State of Mobile

3. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
Mobile Use
Continues to Grow
91% 61%
US Adult Population
Owns a mobile phone
Of these were
Smartphone users
2.32
Billion
Smartphone usage will surpass
2.5 billion in 2018
Source: Statista

4. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
App Downloads
JULY 2013 JUNE 2014 2017
50
BILLION
75
BILLION
197
BILLION
Google’s Android market
passed 50 billion app
downloads and featured
over 1 million available
apps.
Apple iTunes reached 75
billion app downloads and
featured 1.2 million
available apps.
In 2017, over 197 billion
apps had been
downloaded, resulting in
$77 billion in revenue.
Source: Statista

5. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
2016-012016-022016-032016-042016-052016-062016-072016-082016-092016-102016-112016-122017-012017-022017-032017-042017-052017-062017-072017-082017-092017-102017-112017-122018-012018-02
How People Access The Web
Desktop Mobile Tablet
Source: Statcounter

6. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
Web and Mobile are converging
• Support from platform
• Feature support first
• Delivery via App Store
• Native Performance
• Vendor lock-in
• No shared code
• Support from community
• Features come later
• Delivery via App Store
• Native Performance
• Common Business Logic
• ~ 80% common code
• Support from community
• Common Web Features
• Delivery via Web
• Browser Performance
• Single Codebase
• 100% common code
Native Apps Cross Platform Apps Progressive Web Apps

7. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
What are developers using?
39%
18%
12%
31%
%age of Mobile Developers (primary platform)
Native (iOS & Android)
Cross-Platform (Xamarin, React Native)
Hybrid (Ionic, Phonegap, Cordova)
Mobile Web (PWA)

8. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
Mobile & Web App
Development with AWS

9. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
AWS: The Right Platform for Mobile Developers
App Backend Tools
The features you need Build > Test > Deploy
App Frontend
Develop and integrate

10. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
AWS AppSync
Real-time & offline data using GraphQL

11. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
Building a mobile app
• Authenticate & authorize users
• Manage network usage efficiently
• Synchronize data
• Multiple devices & platforms
• Run business logic
• Conflict detection & resolution
• Offline data access
• Multiple data sources
• Shared data
• Real time data streaming

12. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
App Data Challenges
Data requirements
vary across devices
and become harder
when multiple
users share data
Users want instant
access to data
Building scalable
data-driven apps
without learning
distributed systems
concepts is hard
Users want to
continue using
their apps even
with low or no
connectivity

13. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
AWS AppSync
Managed Serverless
GraphQL service
Connect to data
sources in your account
Add data sync, real-time and
offline capabilities for any data
source or API
GraphQL façade
(queries, mutations, subscriptions)
for any AWS service
Conflict detection and
resolution in the cloud
Enterprise security features
(IAM, Cognito, API keys)

14. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
GraphQL
GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a runtime
for fulfilling those queries with your existing data.
GraphQL provides a complete and understandable description
of the data in your API, gives clients the power to ask for
exactly what they need and nothing more, makes it easier to
evolve APIs over time, and enables powerful developer tools
graphql.org/learn

15. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
GraphQL is a query language for APIs…
• Resources defined by a GraphQL Schema
• Client sends query, server orchestrates data
• Mutiple transports (HTTP, MQTT, WebSockets)
• Efficient (Network Bandwidth, Dev Time)
• Self Documenting (Introspection w/ Tooling)

16. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
GraphQL is a query language for APIs…
Queries read data
Mutations write data
Subscriptions are pushed data in real-time

17. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved
GraphQL: Query Basics
There are 3 operation types:
• Query
• Mutation
• Subscription
Variables are optional. When using
variables, clients send a “variables” object
containing the values alongside the
query.

18. Adopting GraphQL
Change is Hard. Lessons Learned Implementing GraphQL at Ticketmaster
Tom Bray
Chief Architect

19. Our GraphQL Journey
● Where do we want to go?
● Where did we start?
● What has the journey been like so far?
● What challenges remain?

20. Where do we want to go?

21. Name: Sara Connor
Occupation: Rockstar React
Developer
Hobbies: Avid musical
theater fan
Objectives: Buy Aladdin tickets
Get a great job
using Next.js &
GraphQL

22. 100,000
Live events per year
1,000,000,000
Fans
What if we could efficiently
deliver all the data this
experience needs in a single
request?

23. 500,000,000
Tickets per year
What if we could push
availability updates in real-
time?

24. Live event data, at your fingertips

25. Continuously Improving User Experience and Developer Experience
DX
UX
Reducing complexity results in more time to focus on creating delightful UX
Improving DX results in better UX and a tighter feedback loop

26. The Opportunity Cost of Complexity
Every minute a developer spends wrestling with complexity is a minute she
could have spent creating something awesome.

27. A single API powering the entire fan experience
Find Events Shop for Seats Purchase Transfer/Sell Attend

28. Where did we start?

29. Discovery API
developer.ticketmaster.com
Get Event Details
Method: GET
Description: Get details for a specific
event using the unique identifier for
the event.
/discovery/v2/events/{id}

30. Backends for Frontends: Transformation
BFF REST API
{
}
{

31. Backends for Frontends: Aggregation
BFF
REST API
REST API

32. Different BFFs for different front ends??
REST API
REST APIBFF
BFF

33. GraphQL is the only BFF we need

34. Getting the Hype Cycle started!

35. Getting the Hype Cycle started!

36. Expectations
Time
Innovation Trigger
Peak of Inflated Expectations
Trough of Disillusionment
Plateau of Productivity
Slope of Enlightenment
Hype Cycle
We are here

37. Expectations
Time
Innovation Trigger
Peak of Inflated Expectations
Trough of Disillusionment
Plateau of Productivity
Slope of Enlightenment
Beware the API Sprawl!
APISprawl
We are here

38. Innovators Early Adopters Early Majority Late Majority Laggards
Technology Adoption Curve
Marketing disruptive technologies to internal customers

39. Innovators Early Adopters Early Majority Late Majority Laggards
Crossing the Chasm(s)
Small
Chasm
Big
Chasm
What does it take to get GraphQL across these chasms?
How do we
get here?

40. Innovators Early Adopters Early Majority Late Majority Laggards
Innovators
The innovators see the value of GraphQL immediately and will be off to the races
API Sprawl
begins here

41. Innovators Early Adopters Early Majority Late Majority Laggards
Early Adopters
The early adopters are looking for a strategic leap forward...

42. Innovators Early Adopters Early Majority Late Majority Laggards
Early Adopters
Small
Chasm
To cross the first chasm, the Early Adopters need answers:
● How do we solve the N+1 problem?
● What about caching?
● How do we terminate websockets at scale?
● etc.

43. Innovators Early Adopters Early Majority Late Majority Laggards
Early Majority
The early majority are pragmatists looking for an increase in productivity.
What are
we asking
the Early
Majority to
do?
Big
Chasm

44. Team
A
Team
B
Team
C
Collaboration Models
How will teams collaborate to deliver the comprehensive schema?

45. Collaboration Models
Which approach is most conducive to contributions from a large number of teams?
(x)
(x)
(x)
Monolithic API AppSync + Lambda
(x)
(x)
(x)
Team
A
Team
B
Team
C
Team
A
Team
B
Team
C

46. Questions?
@tombray