Developer's Guide to Amazon SimpleDB, Rough Cut, A

Description

This is the Rough Cut version of the printed book.

The Complete Guide to Building Cloud Computing Solutions with Amazon SimpleDB

Using SimpleDB, any organization can leverage Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s powerful cloud-based computing platform–and dramatically reduce the cost and resources associated with application infrastructure. Now, for the first time, there’s a complete developer’s guide to building production solutions with Amazon SimpleDB.

Pioneering SimpleDB developer Mocky Habeeb brings together all the hard-to-find information you need to succeed. Mocky tours the SimpleDB platform and APIs, explains their essential characteristics and tradeoffs, and helps you determine whether your applications are appropriate for SimpleDB. Next, he walks you through all aspects of writing, deploying, querying, optimizing, and securing Amazon SimpleDB applications–from the basics through advanced techniques.

Throughout, Mocky draws on his unsurpassed experience supporting developers on SimpleDB’s official Web forums. He offers practical tips and answers that can’t be found anywhere else, and presents extensive working sample code–from snippets to complete applications.

With A Developer’s Guide to Amazon SimpleDB you will be able to

• Evaluate whether a project is suited for Amazon SimpleDB
• Write SimpleDB applications that take full advantage of SimpleDB’s availability, scalability, and flexibility
• Effectively manage the entire SimpleDB application lifecycle
• Deploy cloud computing applications faster and more easily
• Work with SELECT and bulk data operations
• Fine tune queries to optimize performance
• Integrate SimpleDB security into existing organizational security plans
• Write and enhance runtime SimpleDB clients
• Build complete applications using AJAX and SimpleDB
• Understand low-level issues involved in writing clients and frameworks
• Solve common SimpleDB usage problems and avoid hidden pitfalls

This book will be an indispensable resource for every IT professional evaluating or using SimpleDB to build cloud-computing applications, clients, or frameworks.

Sample Content

Table of Contents

Preface    xvi

Acknowledgments    xviii

1    Introducing Amazon SimpleDB    1

What Is SimpleDB?    1

What SimpleDB Is Not    1

Schema-Less Data    2

Stored Securely in the Cloud    2

Billed Only for Actual Usage    3

Domains, Items, and Attribute Pairs    3

Multi-Valued Attributes    3

Queries    4

High Availability    4

Database Consistency    5

Sizing Up the SimpleDB Feature Set    6

Benefits of Using SimpleDB    6

Database Features SimpleDB Doesn’t Have    7

Higher-Level Framework Functionality    7

Service Limits    8

Abandoning the Relational Model?    8

A Database Without a Schema    9

Areas Where Relational Databases Struggle    10

Scalability Isn’t Your Problem    11

Avoiding the SimpleDB Hype    11

Putting the DBA Out of Work    12

Dodging Copies of C.J. Date    13

Other Pieces of the Puzzle    14

Adding Compute Power with Amazon EC2    14

Storing Large Objects with Amazon S3    14

Queuing Up Tasks with Amazon SQS    15

Comparing SimpleDB to Other Products and Services    15

Windows Azure Platform    15

Google App Engine    17

Apache CouchDB    17

Dynamo-Like Products    18

Compelling Use Cases for SimpleDB    18

Web Services for Connected Systems    18

Low-Usage Application    19

Clustered Databases Without the Time Sink    19

Dynamic Data Application    19

Amazon S3 Content Search    20

Empowering the Power Users    20

Existing AWS Customers    20

Summary    21

2    Getting Started with SimpleDB    23

Gaining Access to SimpleDB    23

Creating an AWS Account    23

Signing Up for SimpleDB    24

Managing Account Keys    24

Finding a Client for SimpleDB    24

Building a SimpleDB Domain Administration Tool    25

Administration Tool Features    25

Key Storage    25

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