Introduction to Amazon DynamoDB

Introduction

Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed, serverless, key-value NoSQL database designed to run high-performance applications at any scale. DynamoDB offers built-in security, continuous backups, automated multi-Region replication, in-memory caching, and data export tools.

Core Components

Unlike relational databases (RDS), DynamoDB does not use strict schemas with tables, rows, and columns.

1. Tables

Similar to relational databases, data is stored in tables. However, you do not need to define the schema (the specific columns) when you create the table.

2. Items

An item is a group of attributes that is uniquely identifiable among all of the other items (similar to a row in RDS). Items in DynamoDB are virtually identical to JSON objects.

3. Attributes

An attribute is a fundamental data element, something that does not need to be broken down any further (similar to a column or field). Different items in the exact same table can have completely different attributes!

Primary Keys

When creating a table, the only thing you must define is the Primary Key. The primary key uniquely identifies each item in the table.

There are two types of primary keys:

• Partition Key: A simple primary key composed of one attribute. DynamoDB uses the partition key's value as input to an internal hash function. The output determines the physical storage partition where the item is stored.
• Partition Key and Sort Key: A composite primary key. All items with the same partition key are stored together, physically sorted by the sort key value.

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