Item: Amazon DynamoDB
Rating: 10
Author: Bob Smith

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

DynamoDB is being used in multiple ways to store vast amounts of semi-structured data which need to be quickly accessible by specific parties. It allows us to easily add new fields/values and access them in an easy manner as projects require. The biggest benefit we see is the ability to add additional fields and not require the structure change of continuity.

Pros and Cons

It's very easy to get started, creating a table with a partition/sort key and you're on your way.
You can scale up and down your read/write IO as needed.
You can store structured and unstructured data.
It works great with Web Development as it's JSON based.

There is a cost associated with creating indexes and being able to run queries.
It would be nice to have a thick client to be able to connect and work with DynamoDB.
It would be nice to be more aware of how DynamoDB functioned to be able to engineer towards optimization.

Return on Investment

Some developers see DynamoDB and try to fit problems to it, instead of picking the best solution for a given problem. This is true of any newer tool that people are trying to adopt.
It has allowed us to add more scalability to some of our systems.
As with any new technology there was a ramp up/rework phase as we learned best practices.

Alternatives Considered

MongoDB, Cassandra and Apache Solr

When you compare database systems it's easy to have an apples to apples comparison. However, when comparing two No-SQL systems it isn't as easy because they are built with different purposes in mind. DynamoDB has been easier to implement because it comes as a Service from Amazon and we haven't also had to learn the administrative needs for it as we have had to do with other No-SQL technologies.

Other Software Used

Amazon Relational Database Service, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Elastic MapReduce, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), Amazon Route 53, Apache Solr, Oracle Java SE, Eclipse, Apache Tomcat, Apache Maven

Likelihood to Renew

As with most Amazon Services, it isn't about renewal of DynamoDB, it's about continued use of the service with a realistic pay per value approach. If a service is viable to a business, then it is used and you can always consolidate away unused services. We will continue use of DynamoDB until it doesn't deliver as well as other technologies/services.

Likelihood to Recommend

We've used DynamoDB to store online form submissions where forms can have differing information, identify changes between data sets, storage for vast amounts of large data-sets for analytics. Each of these scenarios has pros/cons versus using other traditional methods. It is more about accomplishing what you need to. DynamoDB allows for an increase in Read/Write IOs and allows scalability that some other traditional methods do not. Though it doesn't include some of the nice structure that traditional methods.

DynamoDB is a great No-SQL solution

Overall Satisfaction with Amazon DynamoDB