📚 Creating Real-Time Dashboards With AWS AppSync

In this fast-paced world, applications are expected to disseminate information in real time. A few examples are tracking cargo movements, keeping a tab on stock prices, analyzing data of an ongoing football match, etc. Moreover, people use all kinds of devices like desktop, mobile, and tabs to access these applications. Also, some applications require this information and alerts to be actionable that is a user can update one or more attributes. For example, a cargo handling facility can update the status of cargo by performing an arrival scan. So, in essence, we are looking at an interactive real-time dashboard that can be accessed from multiple devices. In this article, I’ll discuss how this kind of dashboard can be built using AWS AppSync. I’ll take a common use case and create a reference solutions architecture for the use case. 

A quick introduction to AWS AppSync for those who are new to this service. AppSync is a serverless GraphQL interface that is robust and scalable. GraphQL is a data language that was developed to enable apps to fetch data from servers. It has a declarative, self-documenting style. In a GraphQL operation, the client specifies how to structure the data when it is returned by the server. This makes it possible for the client to query only for the data it needs, in the format that it needs it in.