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Mastering Dynamodb
If you have interest in DynamoDB and want to know what DynamoDB is all about and become proficient in using it, this is the book for you. If you are an intermediate user who wishes to enhance your knowledge of DynamoDB, this book is aimed at you. Basic familiarity with programming, NoSQL, and cloud computing concepts would be helpful.
236 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 25, 2017
I think it is a little superficial. Is a good book for introduction to DynamoDB, but maybe not for "mastering".
November 2, 2014
Databases are very much in the spotlight lately and especially the NoSQL breed. While there are dozens of offerings on the market only a handful tops the list, one such offspring in the key-value area is Amazon's DynamoDB. Being a close relative to such popular players on this arena as Redis or Voldemort DynamoDB I figured has many unique points, add-ons and a strong backing by the user community, not only the mighty Amazon corporation. Mastering DynamoDB as a book came out at a very strategic time.
It is a great technical read, too. Tanmay (the author) walks you gently into the wonderful NoSQL database world. Then the book takes you, arm with DynamoDB, and make a fearless traveller sailing through high seas of today’s turbulent and fierce data streams and make you prowl the dark alleys of handling the data in the Cloud.
The book is structured so it devotes its several first chapters to the nitty-gritties of the DynamoDB and then explains on best practices and best usage scenarios. The book has an advanced chapter for those who like the extremes. For example relational integrity is suddenly discussed in a book about NoSQL (no schema or structure supposed to be there the core, alas not so fast). The book tastefully ends with an overview of the top 10 or so of the sheer third party offerings from either Amazon itself or GitHubers.
The best one I liked is the local DynamoDB and the ability to conduct transactions. The module that allows to scale the database appeared to be very much of value, but frankly I was surprised it is not written by Amazon itself. To say more, the design decision of having a developer (or perhaps an admin) being responsible for assigning and provisioning compute throughput for each table made my eyebrows raise.
The author appeared very savvy in the subject of Cloud Data (perhaps I coined it), I actually learned quite a few interesting techniques and found out that Amazon has SLAs for each component, even for their internal systems and especially such a crucial piece as DynamoDB. And they are tight SLAs. Yet, make a lot of sense to me. Nobody argues Amazon does not successfully process huge volumes of data, fast.
Anyway, I liked the book and the author much, heck, perhaps even more than the DynamoDB as a database itself.
It's a 5 stars out of 5.
It is a great technical read, too. Tanmay (the author) walks you gently into the wonderful NoSQL database world. Then the book takes you, arm with DynamoDB, and make a fearless traveller sailing through high seas of today’s turbulent and fierce data streams and make you prowl the dark alleys of handling the data in the Cloud.
The book is structured so it devotes its several first chapters to the nitty-gritties of the DynamoDB and then explains on best practices and best usage scenarios. The book has an advanced chapter for those who like the extremes. For example relational integrity is suddenly discussed in a book about NoSQL (no schema or structure supposed to be there the core, alas not so fast). The book tastefully ends with an overview of the top 10 or so of the sheer third party offerings from either Amazon itself or GitHubers.
The best one I liked is the local DynamoDB and the ability to conduct transactions. The module that allows to scale the database appeared to be very much of value, but frankly I was surprised it is not written by Amazon itself. To say more, the design decision of having a developer (or perhaps an admin) being responsible for assigning and provisioning compute throughput for each table made my eyebrows raise.
The author appeared very savvy in the subject of Cloud Data (perhaps I coined it), I actually learned quite a few interesting techniques and found out that Amazon has SLAs for each component, even for their internal systems and especially such a crucial piece as DynamoDB. And they are tight SLAs. Yet, make a lot of sense to me. Nobody argues Amazon does not successfully process huge volumes of data, fast.
Anyway, I liked the book and the author much, heck, perhaps even more than the DynamoDB as a database itself.
It's a 5 stars out of 5.
February 25, 2017
Better than the white papers from amazon.
October 14, 2014
This book serves as a very good introduction to Amazon DynamoDB and NoSQL datastores in general. The initial chapters cover various concepts of NoSQL dbs and present an essential comparison with their RDBMS counterparts. It highlights how DynamoDB is in a clear contrast to Amazon's SimpleDB and RDS. Tanmay has a very simple and clear writing style and a thorough understanding of the functional components in DynamoDB, and his expertise is very well reflected in the chapters that follow. A reader of any level of expertise can equally enjoy the step-by-step walk-through as much as a seasoned DB expert. The author does a commendable job of including several screenshots and sample code snippets that makes a rich experience of self-paced learning for a reader.
Take-away:
+ You will have a complete high-level overview of DynamoDB's architecture, functionality, data modeling and operations.
+ Ideal for self paced learning.
+ Offers a very intricate detailing on administration and performance tuning.
+ Subscribed users of other AWS services can appreciate their interleaving of DynamoDB.
However, the book can certainly make use of better proof reading. There is certainly a room for improvement on active/passive voice usage and grammatical correctness in several chapters.
Interesting update:
The chapter on Data Model Concepts says the item size is limited to 64KB. However Amazon recently announced that the Item size limit is increased to 400KB (http://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/dynam...).
Take-away:
+ You will have a complete high-level overview of DynamoDB's architecture, functionality, data modeling and operations.
+ Ideal for self paced learning.
+ Offers a very intricate detailing on administration and performance tuning.
+ Subscribed users of other AWS services can appreciate their interleaving of DynamoDB.
However, the book can certainly make use of better proof reading. There is certainly a room for improvement on active/passive voice usage and grammatical correctness in several chapters.
Interesting update:
The chapter on Data Model Concepts says the item size is limited to 64KB. However Amazon recently announced that the Item size limit is increased to 400KB (http://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/dynam...).
September 11, 2016
If you want a single source to get you up to speed on DynamoDB this is not a bad choice.
It provides a run down of the DynamoDB api, advice and examples of common use cases and
also provides background on how DynamoDB works behind the scenes.
That being said, I would not pay money for this book (I had access via a subscription service). By 2016 this is already starting to feel a bit out of date as it has not been updated to reflect the changes made to DynamoDB in the past couple of years.
Also everything in this book is available elsewhere, a lot of it was just collated from the documentation provided by Amazon. The behind the scenes was just a summary of the Dynamo paper, and at least one sentence has clearly been ripped from Wikipedia.
It provides a run down of the DynamoDB api, advice and examples of common use cases and
also provides background on how DynamoDB works behind the scenes.
That being said, I would not pay money for this book (I had access via a subscription service). By 2016 this is already starting to feel a bit out of date as it has not been updated to reflect the changes made to DynamoDB in the past couple of years.
Also everything in this book is available elsewhere, a lot of it was just collated from the documentation provided by Amazon. The behind the scenes was just a summary of the Dynamo paper, and at least one sentence has clearly been ripped from Wikipedia.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews