What is DynamoDB?

DynamoDB is a hosted NoSQL database offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It offers:

• reliable performance even as it scales;
• a managed experience, so you won’t be SSH-ing into servers to upgrade the crypto libraries;
• a small, simple API allowing for simple key-value access as well as more advanced query patterns.

DynamoDB is a particularly good fit for the following use cases:

Applications with large amounts of data and strict latency requirements. As your amount of data scales, JOINs and advanced SQL operations can slow down your queries. With DynamoDB, your queries have predictable latency up to any size, including over 100 TBs!

Serverless applications using AWS Lambda. AWS Lambda provides auto-scaling, stateless, ephemeral compute in response to event triggers. DynamoDB is accessible via an HTTP API and performs authentication & authorization via IAM roles, making it a perfect fit for building Serverless applications.

Data sets with simple, known access patterns. If you’re generating recommendations and serving them to users, DynamoDB’s simple key-value access patterns make it a fast, reliable choice.

Ready to learn more?

Start with the key concepts to learn about tables, items, and other basic elements of DynamoDB. If you want the computer science background on DynamoDB, check out the section on the Dynamo Paper.

If you want to get your hands dirty, set up your environment then start with the section on working with single items. Then you can move on to working with multiple items using Queries and Scans.

Want the advanced stuff? Power up your tables with secondary indexes and DynamoDB Streams.

Still want more? Head to Additional Reading to find the best community resources on DynamoDB.