Comment by jmull

I think they are just trying to put in place the common data model that, as you point out, they need.

(So their micro services can work together usefully and efficiently -- I would guess that currently the communication burden between microservice teams is high and still is not that effective.)

> The whole point of GraphQL is to create a unified view of something

It can do that, but that's not really the point of GraphQL.. I suppose you're saying that's how it was used as FB. That's fine, IMO, but it sounds like this NF team decided to use something more abstract for the same purpose.

I can't comment on their choices without doing a bunch more analysis, but in my own experience I've found off-the-shelf data modeling formats have too much flexibility in some places (forcing you to add additional custom controls or require certain usage patterns) and not enough in others (forcing you to add custom extensions). The nice thing about your own format is you can make it able to express everything you want and nothing you don't. And have a well-defined projection to Graphql (and sqlite and oracle and protobufs and xml and/or whatever other thing you're using).