Timestamp: 12/14/07 12:13:21 (2 hours ago) Author: xmlhacker Message: the cat is out of the bag ;-)
… and that cat’s got some *TEETH* …
Amazon.com: Amazon Web Services (2): Help: Amazon Web Services (2) FAQ & More
Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud. These services are designed to make web-scale computing easier and more cost-effective for developers.
Traditionally, this type of functionality has been accomplished with a clustered relational database that requires a sizable upfront investment, brings more complexity than is typically needed, and often requires a DBA to maintain and administer. In contrast, Amazon SimpleDB is easy to use and provides the core functionality of a database - real-time lookup and simple querying of structured data - without the operational complexity. Amazon SimpleDB requires no schema, automatically indexes your data and provides a simple API for storage and access. This eliminates the administrative burden of data modeling, index maintenance, and performance tuning. Developers gain access to this functionality within Amazon’s proven computing environment, are able to scale instantly, and pay only for what they use.
So I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of the private beta for Amazon’s SimpleDB service, and as such have had the opportunity to get down and dirty with both a C# and XSLT 2.0 extension API, providing the opportunity to gain an insiders understanding of just how fast the storage and retrieval of data can truly be when you have tools to play with that have been developed over the course of the last 10+ years to run the most advanced and capable e-commerce platform on the planet.
And now the rest of the planet gets to play with them too. :)
*SWEET*!
With this announcement comes a new API, and that API won’t be programmatically accessible for at least a couple more weeks (though the docs are available now), so we’ve got a bit of time before we can really sink our teeth into what comes next. But there is one thing I can assure you based off my experience with the existing API (which is fairly close to the final API) and the backend system in which you interact with via that API…
SimpleDB is *FAST*. And it’s simple. *DROP DEAD SIMPLE*.
And before anyone asks, no, you can’t do joins. This isn’t that kind of database, so there are many use cases in which SimpleDB does not apply. But there are quite a few more use cases that it does apply to, and it’s in these cases in which I can assure you of one more thing,
Amazon just turned the world of ecommerce web-scale computing for the masses on it’s head again.
*NICE*!
Do you think the non-tech masses (regular users with no programing background) will be able to develop their own mini-databases with Amazon DB? Or is this just a web developer tool for now?
@Jeff,
You're going to need to have at least some programming experience to be enabled to interop with SDB. That said, I can't imagine it will be too long before someone comes along and bolts a non-programmer friendly UI over the top. In fact, this is probably a business opportunity just waiting for the right hacker to come along and build out.