For website frontends and mobile applications, RESTful APIs have long been the method of implementing the presentation tier to serve up dynamic content. This layer, often referred to by developers as the experience layer, relies heavily on reliable and low latency endpoints and adherence to strict interface specifications. REST is doing a great job at providing these services but it is not without challenges. 

Now there is a new technology called GraphQL, which was originally developed by Facebook. Since a public launch in 2015, there has been wide adoption from several large organizations such as GitHub, Airbnb, and Twitter. GraphQL is a type and query specification that is optimized for fetching and manipulating data. It was designed to provide exactly the right amount of data and in the format that the client requested. The technology exposes a single endpoint to query and interact with data instead of the verb words defined in REST. 

In this chapter, we will touch on the basics of GraphQL and introduce a managed serverless service. You should come away with an understanding of what GraphQL is and be ready to start experimenting with your own APIs. 

We'll cover the following topics:

• The core concepts of GraphQL
• Two approaches to building a GraphQL API