1. Control Query Cost, Depth & Breadth

🛡️

Prevent expensive or malicious operations by enforcing query depth limits, field limits, and cost analysis. Implement rate limiting based on query cost, not just request count, to protect your backend services.

2. Prevent the N+1 Problem

⚡

Use batching patterns like DataLoader to group repeated database or service lookups into a single operation. This is critical for preventing performance degradation as query complexity increases.

3. Use Persisted Queries & Caching

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In production, use persisted queries to reduce validation overhead and shrink the attack surface. Serve safe query operations over GET to enable CDN and HTTP caching, and always enable GZIP compression.

4. Build Security into the API Layer

🔒

Apply strong authorization at the object and field level. Disable introspection in production. Validate all inputs and enforce timeouts to protect against denial-of-service attacks from nested queries.

5. Design for Consumers, Not Storage

🎨

Model your schema around user-facing workflows, not database tables. Keep the schema minimal and consistent. Use federation or a supergraph to unify the graph for consumers while services remain independent.