I get the impression that GraphQL only got popular because it was backed by behemoth Facebook.

But the other graph query language "Cypher" always seemed a lot more intuitive to me.

Are they really trying to solve such different problems? Cypher seems much more flexible.

Cypher tries to solve problems closer to storage.

GraphQL was designed to add types and remote data fetching abstractions to a large existing PHP server side code base. Cypher is designed to work closer to storage, although there are many implementations that run cypher on top of anything ("table functions" in ladybug).

Neo4j's implementation of cypher didn't emphasize types. You had a relatively schemaless design that made it easy to get started. But Kuzu/Ladybug implementation of cypher is closer to DuckDB SQL.

They both have their places in computing as long as we have terminology that's clear and unambiguous.

Look at the number of comments in this story that refer to GraphQL as GQL (which is a ISO standard).

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FrustratedMonky 21 hours ago | parent [-]

Got it. I didn't realize. Checking out the docs, looks like GQL is based on Cypher. So in the thread people were talking about it, just calling it GQL as the common name, not Cypher as the original name and I missed it.

GQL-SQL - for queries.

GraphQL, more for REST??

	▲	adsharma 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		GQL is related to Cypher, but not a common name for Cypher. https://www.tigergraph.com/glossary/cypher-query-language/ https://www.tigergraph.com/blog/the-rise-of-gql-a-new-iso-st... Has some history behind it. Syntax and some queries: https://github.com/opengql/grammar/tree/main/samples Full specification costs you about $270