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Showing of 35What is Amazon DynamoDB and what are its key characteristics?
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Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service provided by AWS. Key characteristics include:
- Serverless: No infrastructure management required
- High Performance: Single-digit millisecond latency at any scale
- Highly Available: 99.99% availability SLA with multi-AZ replication
- Flexible Schema: NoSQL document and key-value data models
- Auto Scaling: Automatically scales up/down based on traffic
- ACID Transactions: Support for transactions across multiple items
- Global Tables: Multi-region, multi-master replication
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What are the main data types supported by DynamoDB?
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DynamoDB supports several data types:
Scalar Types:
- String (S)
- Number (N)
- Binary (B)
- Boolean (BOOL)
- Null (NULL)
Collection Types:
- String Set (SS)
- Number Set (NS)
- Binary Set (BS)
- List (L) - ordered collection of values
- Map (M) - unordered collection of key-value pairs
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What is the difference between DynamoDB and traditional relational databases?
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| DynamoDB | Relational Database |
|---|---|
| NoSQL, schema-less | SQL, fixed schema |
| Horizontal scaling | Vertical scaling (primarily) |
| Eventually consistent reads by default | ACID consistency |
| No complex joins | Complex joins supported |
| Key-value and document model | Relational model |
| Managed service | Requires administration |
| Pay per request/capacity | Pay for instance time |
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What is a partition key and why is it important?
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A partition key is the primary key component that determines which physical partition your data is stored on. It's crucial because:
- Data Distribution: DynamoDB uses the partition key value to distribute data across multiple partitions
- Performance: Even distribution prevents hot partitions
- Scalability: Enables horizontal scaling across partitions
Example: In a user table, user_id as partition key distributes users evenly across partitions.
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Explain the difference between Query and Scan operations.
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Query:
- Uses primary key or index keys
- Retrieves specific items efficiently
- Lower cost and better performance
- Can use filter expressions for additional filtering
Scan:
- Examines every item in table/index
- Expensive and slow for large tables
- Uses filter expressions to return subset
- Should be avoided in production for large datasets
# Query example
response = table.query(
KeyConditionExpression=Key('user_id').eq('123')
)
# Scan example
response = table.scan(
FilterExpression=Attr('age').gt(21)
)
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What are Read Capacity Units (RCU) and Write Capacity Units (WCU)?
How do you implement Time to Live (TTL) in DynamoDB?
What are the differences between DynamoDB Local and DynamoDB in AWS?
Explain the difference between partition key and composite primary key.
What are the best practices for choosing a good partition key?
How do you model one-to-many relationships in DynamoDB?
What are Global Secondary Indexes (GSI) and when would you use them?
What's the difference between GSI and Local Secondary Index (LSI)?
What are sparse indexes and how are they useful?
What are the consistency models in DynamoDB?
What are DynamoDB transactions and when should you use them?
What are conditional writes and how do they work?
What's the difference between provisioned and on-demand capacity modes?
What causes throttling in DynamoDB and how can you prevent it?
What is eventual consistency and how does it affect your application design?
What are DynamoDB Streams and how are they used?
What are Global Tables and when would you use them?
What is DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) and when should you use it?
How do you implement pagination in DynamoDB?
What are PartiQL and how does it work with DynamoDB?
How do you secure DynamoDB tables?
What are the DynamoDB service limits you should be aware of?
What are DynamoDB best practices for cost optimization?
What monitoring and alerting strategies should you implement for DynamoDB?
What are the different backup and restore options in DynamoDB?
How do you implement pagination with DynamoDB's Query and Scan operations?
How does DynamoDB handle hot partitions?
How do you design for high availability and disaster recovery?
How do you handle large items in DynamoDB?
What are DynamoDB best practices for data modeling?
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DynamoDB cheatsheet
- Core Concepts01
- Data Model02
- Key Components03
- Basic Operations04
- Querying & Scanning05
- Secondary Indexes06
- Performance Optimization07
- Data Modeling Best Practices08
- Advanced Features09
- Use Cases & Design Patterns10
- Performance & Cost Optimization11
- Key Limits & Best Practices12
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