Concept of NoSQL, AWS, and DynamoDB by Aegis Softtech
In this post, the Aegis java development team will discuss the concept of NoSQL, AWS, and DynamoDB and how to use them in java web development projects. The viewer will also want to know about Amazon DynamoDB architecture and its data model idea.
What is NoSQL?
NoSQL – often referred to as Not a SQL – is a database that offers storage and retrieval of data that is stored in a way other than the normal RDBMS. Relational databases were never meant to handle the scale and cleverness challenges that face current applications, nor were they designed to handle the huge amounts of data to bring out ‘information’ it. NoSQL comprised of a variety of database technologies was developed in response to a rise in the volume of data stored about users, their data patterns, the frequency and way in which this data is accessed, and performance and processing needs. Java has primarily been the language since the early days to connect and play with NoSQL databases. Being the strong part, we are going to delve in-depth into how Java development connects with NoSQL DB.
With the advent of the Internet age, the rise of social media, social applications, e-commerce, etc., there has been a burst of data production containing useful information. The current RDBMS techniques though can be handled somehow to store the large amounts of volume but then it becomes increasingly difficult to process those data in order to fetch ‘useful information. A NoSQL technique answers the questions by storing the data in key-value, graphs, documents, etc., which is different from relational databases, making some operations faster in NoSQL and others faster in relational databases. The choice of what technology to use depends on the problem at hand to be solved.
There are many different NoSQL databases in the market. Some of the examples include Cassandra, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Hbase, MemcacheDB, etc.
AWS(Amazon Web Services) and DynamoDB?
Amazon Web Services is a Cloud Service and it is one of the huge Cloud suppliers amongst all those who are supplied. AWS comes with a group of services, all of them serving the cloud model, that permits any application to use the powerful benefits that the Cloud model advises. Begining from sharing of the processing power to the database to the security system to the sharing of computer hardware, it is the one-stop store for any cloud necessity application. One of the most famous and widely used services is DynamoDB: A NoSQL approach to storing data. DynamoDBis a very flexible service that provides a seamless interface for creating, storing, and retrieval of data.
The operations on DynamoDB can either be performed using the AWS UI, AWS CLI (Command Line Interface), or the AWS SDK. The SDK comes in a variety of languages enabling a wide variety of developers to code the applications performing operations on the service. We shall be discussing the Java approach to the system because the Java team in the company has had a long experience developing the applications that have DynamoDB as the back-end database. The pre-requisites for operating in Java would be a JAVA SDK and Maven installed on the machine.
Some Of The Advantages Of Using Dynamodb Are As Follows:
- Scalable – DynamoDB is created for perfect throughput and storage scaling.
- It is fast and has a predictable performance
- Easy Administration – The service is a fully managed one. One creates the DB and the service handles the rest without worrying about the hardware and software provisioning.
- Built-in Fault Tolerance – The built-in fault tolerance feature of DynamoDB is a rather powerful one. It automatically and synchronously replicas your data across multiple Availability Zones
- Secure – The service uses proven cryptographic methods to authenticate users and prevent unauthorized data access
- Integrated Performance – DynamoDB displays a variety of operational metrics for each table in the console. It can also be integrated with another AWS Service called CloudWatch for enhancing metrics.
How to use Amazon DynamoDB?
To use AWS DynamoDB, or as a matter of fact, any of AWS Services, one must download the AWS SDK to use its features. In the case of expert utilization, the following extracts of code are used to download the SDK. If the expert is not present, one can manually download the AWS-java-SDK from the web.
The category can be changed to suit the necessity.
Amazon DynamoDB Architecture
Before proceeding further it would be nice to understand some technical jargon associated with DynamoDB. The DynamoDB data model idea includes tables, products, and attributes.
- Table – A database is a collection of tables. A table is an entity that stores the data. A table is a group of products and each product is a group of attributes. In difference to relational databases, DynamoDB needs that the table has the main key, and it does not necessary to mark all of the attribute names and data types further. All products can have any number of attributes.
- Item – Each item in a DynamoDB table corresponds to a row in a relational database.
- Attribute – Each attribute in an item is a name-value pair. An attribute could be a single or multi-valued set.
DynamoDB API:
Following are the most important DynamoDB API calls that are used very frequently and are the ones that we have been using in our projects.
- CreateTable: This is the API call that is used to create a table in an AWS account in a particular region.
When you create or update a table, you define how much equipped throughput volume you need to save for reads and writing. DynamoDB will save the required machine resources to meet your throughput needs while securing compatible low-latency execution.
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