DynamoDB is a fully managed, highly-available database with replication across multiple AZs

NoSQL – not a relational database! – just simple key:value

single digit millisecond performance.

scales to massive workloads

100TBs of storage

fast and consistence, low latency retrieval

integrated with iam for security authorization and admin
enables event-driven programming via DynamoDB Streams

low cost and auto-scaling

important for exam: 

no db provisioning needed you just create a table

Has two able classes: standard and infrequent access IA table class

Basics of DynamoDB

v important – also exam q:
made up of tables – there is NO SUCH THING AS A DATABASE – you only need to create tables!
the db already exists!

you just create tables – 

each table has a primary key – must be set at creation time
each table can have an infinite number of items ie rows

each item has attributes can be added over time or they can be null

this is much easier to do at any time than with a conventional relational db.

max size of an item is 400KB so not good for large objects

data types supported are:

scalar types: string, number, binary, boolean, null
document types: list, map
set types: string set, number set, binary set

tables:

have primary key – containing partition key (eg user_id) and sort key (eg game_id)
and
attributes: eg score, result – these are items which are NOT the primary key

Is a great choice for a schema where you need to rapidly evolve the schema, better than the others for this.

read/write capacity modes

control how you manage your table capacity – ie the read and write throughput

2 Capacity Modes for DynamoDB

important for exam:

Provisioned mode – is default,  provisioned in advance

we have 2 possible capacity modes:

provisioned mode, where you specify number of read and writes per second, this is the default.

very good for predictable modes.

You have to plan the capacity for this in advance, you pay for provisioned read capacity units RCUs and write capacity units (WCUs)

these “capacity units” are used to set your desired capacity for your database! – set these in the web dashboard of dynamodb when you are provisioning.

you can also add auto scaling mode for both rcu and wcu

and

on-demand mode – much more expensive, but better for unpredictable workloads or sudden transaction spikes where provisioned mode cant scale sufficiently 

on-demand mode:

read write automatically scales up and down acc to workload, so no capacity planning needed
you pay for your use, is more expensive 2-3x more

good for unpredictable workloads which can be large or small varying

need to know for exam!

remember always you just create tables, never a database with dynamodb!

you can specify read and write capacity autoscaling separately

DynamoDB Accelerator DAX

a fully manageable, highly available seamless in-memory cache for dynamodb

helps solve read congestion by means of memory caching

microseconds latency for cached data

does not require any application logic modification – so it is fully compatible with existing dynamodb api

applications can access the database via DAX for much faster reads

TTL is 5 mins default for dax data

dax is different from elasticache in that it is meant for dynamodb and does not change the api
good for individual object cache

elasticache
good for storing aggregation result where further processing required

DynamoDB Stream

very easy – is an ordered stream of data that represents items when created or updated or deleted

can then be sent on to kinesis datastreams
can be read by lambda or kinesis client library apps

data is retained for 24 hrs

use cases:

reacting to changes in real time eg welcome emails to new users
to do analytics
to insert into derivative tables or into elastic serarch
or implement cross region replication

Summary of DynamoDB Streams

So, to summarize DynamoDB Streams

Application -> create/update/delete actions to the TABLE -> Dynamo DB Streams

and from the TABLE -> Kinesis Data Streams -> Kinesis Data Firehose

Kinesis Data Firehose

-> for analytics -> Redshift
-> for archiving -> S3
-> for indexing -> OpenSearch

DynamoDB Global Tables

are cross-region

two way or multi-way replication

to provide for low latency across regions

it is
active-active replication

this means apps can read and write to the table from any region

must enable dynamodb streams for this

TTL expiry: automatically deletes items after an expiry timestamp

eg 1 month for each row in the table

DynamoDB Indexes – only need to know at high level for exam

basically, these allow you to query on attributes other than the primary key

2 types:

gsi – global secondary and lsi – local secondary

(all you need to know for now)

by default you query on the primary key, but you can use gsi or lsi to query on other attributes.

Transactions in DynamoDB

these allow you to write to 2 tables at the same time:

the transaction however MUST write to both or else none – in order to keep the tables accurate – so data consistency is maintained