Focus on your frontend
We took care of everything else.

8base utilizes Amazon Web Services (AWS) for workspace databases (Aurora MySQL), file/object storage (S3), realtime events and notifications (SNS), and serverless computing (Lambda).

8base uses some open source tooling, like Apollo Server. However, we’ve invested heavily in building our own GraphQL Engine that is a core innovation of the 8base platform. This GraphQL Engine is not open source and we continually work on advancing its feature functionality.

GraphQL is an open-source data query and manipulation language for APIs, and a runtime for fulfilling queries with existing data. GraphQL was developed internally by Facebook in 2012 before being publicly released in 2015. In 2018, the GraphQL project was moved from Facebook to the newly-established GraphQL Foundation, hosted by the non-profit Linux Foundation.

It provides an approach to developing web APIs that’s different from REST and other web service architectures. GraphQL consists of a type system, query language and execution semantics, static validation, and type introspection. 8base GraphQL automatically supports reading, writing (mutating), and subscribing to changes to data (realtime updates – most commonly implemented using WebHooks).

This What is GraphQL Video helps to describe the concept.

Developers can...

• Easily get up and running with an instantly available backend and auto-generated GraphQL API.
• Avoid having to spend any time maintaining infrastructure.
• Pull data into any front-end or mobile client, building fully-functional applications.
• Work faster while enjoying a great developer experience.

Non-developers can...

• Quickly build powerful digital products. 
• Use less money and smaller teams to develop scalable, professional-grade applications.
• Leverage the 8base Labs Team to help you design and develop your product

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The 8base team maintains the software and infrastructure behind 8base and provides support if anything goes wrong. We love the open-source philosophy and we use a lot of open-source tools ourselves, but 8base itself is not open source.

8base serverless functions utilize Node.js, an open-source, cross-platform, JavaScript runtime environment that executes JavaScript code on the server-side. 8base's serverless environment supports backend functions written in JavaScript and its superset, TypeScript.

Each 8base workspace provides an Aurora MySQL Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). The standard database is provisioned as a dedicated  instance in a shared cluster that’s hosted in the AWS East Region. In our custom pricing tier, 8base offers the ability to upsize the database environment, move to a dedicated cluster, move to another AWS region, and even create a global cluster.

8base was made to support the needs of professional-grade applications. To us, this means applications that are for business or are the business, as is the case with a startup or scale-up's digital product. Professional-grade applications typically support multiple personas (roles). These applications are also typically data-intensive and workflow-intensive while supporting web and mobile clients.

Common types of applications include:

• Multi-tenant Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications.
• Marketplaces, social networks and other network-centric applications.
• Portals and customer experience applications.
• Internal applications where off-the-shelf SaaS products either do not address the need well or are too expensive to be used.
• Administrative parts of virtual / augmented reality applications.
• Games.
• API-only applications.
• Jamstack applications such as static-site generators.