As systems expand, engineering teams often construct microservices, leading over time to a fragmented ecosystem characterized by scattered data access patterns, redundant business logic, and an inconsistent developer experience. A unified data graph with a consistent execution layer can help mitigate these issues by centralizing schema, streamlining the composition of functionalities, and decreasing operational overhead while maintaining performance and reliability.
Viaduct is Airbnb’s open-source, data-focused service mesh and GraphQL platform created around a single, highly interconnected central schema. It has significantly contributed to scaling Airbnb’s engineering organization.
Adam Miskiewicz, a Principal Software Engineer at Airbnb involved in the development of Viaduct, joins the podcast with Gregor Vand to discuss the inception of Viaduct at Airbnb, the architectural principles guiding it, the challenges involved in scaling GraphQL to millions of queries per second, and the reasons behind open-sourcing the platform. They also explore the future of backend development in an AI-driven landscape and the potential impact of unified data layers on the next generation of engineering systems.
Gregor Vand is a security-focused technologist, formerly serving as CTO in cybersecurity, cyber insurance, and general software engineering firms. Based in Singapore, he can be reached through his profile at vand.hk or on LinkedIn.
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