AWS DynamoDB is an excellent example of a production-ready NoSQL database. In recent years, DynamoDB has been able to attract many customers because of its features, such as high-availability, reliability, and infinite scalability. DynamoDB can be easily integrated with massive data crunching tools such as Hadoop/EMR, which is an essential part of this data-driven world, and hence, it is widely accepted. The cost and time efficient design makes DynamoDB stand out differently among its peers. The design of DynamoDB is so neat and clean that it has inspired many NoSQL databases to simply follow it.
This book is a practical, example-oriented guide that starts with simple recipes, such as how to get started with creating a DynamoDB table, and gradually takes you through the advanced level recipes, such as how to create Internet scalable web/mobile applications using DynamoDB as a backend. It explains recipes on how to integrate DynamoDB with other AWS services such as AWS EMR, AWS CloudSearch, AWS Redshift, and many others. It also contains various recipes on how to secure DynamoDB using AWS IAM. It has plenty of recipes that discuss the DynamoDB best practices, which will help you use DynamoDB in the most efficient manner. It is concise with clean topic descriptions, plenty of screenshots, and code samples in order to enhance the clarity and to help you try and test things on your own.
Chapter 1, Taking Your First Steps with DynamoDB, introduces you to the DynamoDB console, AWS CLI, and DynamoDB Local, and you will learn simple CRUD operations on a DynamoDB table. It also covers how to set up your workspace to perform various recipes in the later chapters.
Chapter 2, Operating with DynamoDB Tables, provides you with hands-on recipes that can be performed on DynamoDB tables using the AWS SDK for Java, .NET, and PHP, along with a detailed explanation.
Chapter 3, Manipulating DynamoDB Items, enlightens you with various recipes on DynamoDB and how to manipulate DynamoDB items. Recipes that discuss batch, get, and write operations will help you understand how to handle bulk data in a cost efficient manner.
Chapter 4, Managing DynamoDB Indexes, helps you understand the use of secondary indexes in detail. It gives you ready-to-cook recipes on how to use Global and Local secondary indexes using the AWS SDK for Java, .NET, and PHP.
Chapter 5, Exploring High Level Programming Interfaces for DynamoDB, covers topics, such as object persistence model interfaces provided by the AWS SDK for Java and .NET. A detailed explanation on annotation-driven APIs is also provided in this chapter.
Chapter 6, Securing DynamoDB, introduces you to a rich identity and access model provided by AWS and how to apply that to DynamoDB. Recipes, such as client-side encryption and masking, are helpful to achieve high-level security for data stored in DynamoDB.
Chapter 7, DynamoDB Best Practices, covers various recipes on the cost and performance efficient services used in DynamoDB. Recipes, such as error handling and auto retries, will help you make your application robust. It also highlights the use of a transaction library in order to implement atomic transactions on DynamoDB.
Chapter 8, Integrating DynamoDB with other AWS Services, provides you ready-to-use recipes of how to integrate DynamoDB with various other AWS services, such as AWS Pipeline, EMR, S3, CloudSearch, Redshift, and so on. You will also learn when to integrate with which service.
Chapter 9, Developing Web Applications using DynamoDB, gives you an end-to-end experience on how to create web applications using DynamoDB as a database. At the end of this chapter, you will not only learn how to start, but also how to deploy the application on AWS Elastic Beanstalk.
Chapter 10, Developing Mobile Applications using DynamoDB, discusses how to build an Internet scalable mobile application using DynamoDB as a database. It also helps you understand how to use Asynchronous calls while accessing DynamoDB from Android apps.
To get started with this book, you should have a laptop/desktop with any OS, such as Windows, UNIX, or Mac. You should have an Internet connection to access DynamoDB. It's also good to have the development IDE, such as Eclipse or Visual Studio.
This book is intended for those who have a basic understanding of AWS services and want to take their knowledge to the next level by getting their hands dirty with coding recipes in DynamoDB.
In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it, How it works, There's more, and See also).
To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:
This section tells you what to expect in the recipe, and describes how to set up any software or any preliminary settings required for the recipe.
This section usually consists of a detailed explanation of what happened in the previous section.
This section consists of additional information about the recipe in order to make the reader more knowledgeable about the recipe.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."
A block of code is set as follows:
<dependency> <groupId>com.amazonaws</groupId> <artifactId>aws-java-sdk</artifactId> <version>1.9.30</version> </dependency>
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
aws dynamodb query --table-name product --key-conditions file://conditions.json
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Click on the Sign in to the Console button."
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