Ramblings on code, Sitecore and stuff
Sitecore Experience Edge is a multi-tenant system hosting tenants for a number of different Sitecore source systems. The data models of each source system are quite different which requires a different schema in the GraphQL API for each kind of source system. In this post I’ll be exploring the GraphQL schema used for XM tenants on Experience Edge. This schema is used by XM, XM cloud and managed cloud XM instances.
Experience Edge is a SaaS offering from Sitecore which allows users to publish content and retrieve it via a globally available GraphQL API. The service takes on the burden of scalability so you don’t have to. It provides a buffer between your content delivery applications (statically generated sites (SSG), server side rendered sites (SSR), kiosk applications, mobile applications, etc) and your headless CMS (Content Hub or Sitecore XM/XP) which allows the CMS to go offline for upgrades or maintenance without losing the ability to serve dynamic content.
Kafka is a great piece of technology for integrating disparate applications in a decoupled manner. It does however have some nuances which are important to understand. I’ve been tripped up a few times while doing local development, so I thought I’d write it all down in the hope of saving someone else some frustration.