Apollo Federation

Apollo Federation stitches multiple GraphQL subgraphs into a single supergraph via a router. The idea is compelling — each team owns their schema, the router composes them. The reality is layers of complexity on top of an already complex paradigm.

Schema composition, entity resolution, and federated tracing all add operational overhead. When the underlying subgraphs break, debugging spans the router, the subgraph, and the composition rules. REST APIs behind a simple reverse proxy achieve the same service decomposition without the GraphQL tax.