Quick Start on DynamoDB: Part 1

My intention is to make it loud and clear that learning Dynamo DB is simple and easy to use. Before we jump right into it, I would like to familiarize you with the following. This article can be considered a quick reference for the DynamoDB starters.

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This will help to unlearn the RDBMS mindset and give you enough torque for learning and implementing this quickly.

DynamoDB is

• AWS NoSQL database
• Fast and flexible
• Cost-effective
• Highly scalable
• Secure and fault-tolerant

Terminology Mapping to RDBMS

Dynamo DB supports the following data types:

Basic:

• string

• number

• binary

• Boolean

Set:

• Stringset

• Numberset

• Binaryset

Doc Types:

• List

• Map

Naming Conventions

Since Dynamo DB does not allow multiple database concept like RDBMS, we should follow some naming convention to identify the tables related to each project otherwise it will be difficult to maintain

We always suggest prefixing the table name with product.

e.g: myProduct.userTable

Consistency Models

 Strong Consistency:

A strongly consistent is used to read and return a result that reflects all the writes that was received as a successful response prior to the read.

• Up to date

Eventual Consistency:

The eventual consistency option is used to maximize the read throughput. Consistency across all copies of data is usually reached within a second. Repeating a read after a short time should return the updated data.

• 50% Cheaper
• May or may not reflect the latest copy of data
• Default consistency for all operations

Capacity Units

The read/write capacity mode controls how you are charged for read and write throughput and how you manage capacity. You can set the read/write capacity mode while creating a table. You can change it later.

Throughput Capacity

• Used to control r/w throughput

• Support Auto Scaling

• 1 Capacity unit = 1 req/sec

Read Capacity Unit

• 1 RCU = 1 strongly consistent table read / sec

Or

• 1 RCU = 2 eventually consistent table read / sec

  • In block of 4 kb

Write Capacity Unit

• 1 WCU = 1 table write / sec

  • In block of 1 kb

In the next article, we will see about Partition key, indexing, and creating tables using AWS consoles. Hope this helps.

Further Reading

Getting Started With DynamoDB and Spring

Working With DynamoDB