Work

GraphQL vs. REST: A Performance and Cost Investigation for Serverless Applications

Year: 2024

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: Serverless computing simplifies application deployment by removing the need for infrastructure management, with RESTful APIs being the common interface. However, REST can lead to inefficiencies such as data over-fetching and under-fetching, which impact performance and cost. This paper investigates GraphQL as an alternative to REST for serverless functions using a serverless image processing pipeline. We evaluate roundtrip time (RTT), scalability, and cost, while also examining managed (AWS AppSync) and unmanaged (Apollo Server) GraphQL hosting solutions. Our results show that GraphQL generally outperforms REST with respect to pipeline RTT, especially when there is high network latency, offering a potentially better fit for optimizing data transfer in serverless applications.

DOI: 10.1145/3702634.3702956

Authors: Runjie Jin, Robert Cordingly, Dongfang Zhao, Wes Lloyd

Institution: University of Washington Tacoma

Language: English

Topic: Cloud Computing and Resource Management

Subfield: Information Systems

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: gold

OpenAlex ID: W4404755366

FWCI: 1.921

Cites: 9

Cited by: 5

Related to: 10