Taming Service-Oriented Architecture Using A Data-Oriented Service Mesh

Airbnb introduces Viaduct, a data-oriented service mesh built on GraphQL that addresses the complexity of large-scale microservices dependency graphs.

• •Traditional SOA relies on procedure-oriented service meshes (like Istio/Linkerd) where consumers must explicitly depend on individual services; Viaduct abstracts these dependencies by organizing around data instead
• •Viaduct uses a single central GraphQL schema defining types, queries, mutations, and interfaces that span all microservices, allowing consumers to navigate related data without knowing which service provides it
• •A "central schema" approach enables deriving both service APIs and database schemas from one source, reducing the multi-team coordination overhead typically required for schema changes
• •Stateless derived-data and BFF services are replaced by serverless "derived fields" computed via cloud functions operating on the graph, reducing operational overhead
• •Built on graphql-java, Viaduct supports field-level data obse