Amazon continues to expand its web services (cloud computing) offerings. They have just introduced Amazon SimpleDB, a new kind of data base that will help transform their current suite of cloud computing offerings - S3 storage and EC2 computing for example - into a live cloud environment. The Amazon SimpleDB is built on top of Erlang, and is optimized for large data sets, and is schemaless.
Simple DB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time. Traditionally, this type of functionality has been accomplished with a clustered relational database that requires a sizable upfront investment, brings more complexity than is typically needed, and often requires a DBA to maintain and administer. In contrast, Amazon SimpleDB is easy to use and provides the core functionality of a database - real-time lookup and simple querying of structured data - without the operational complexity. Amazon SimpleDB requires no schema, automatically indexes your data and provides a simple API for storage and access. [More information is available here.]
My database nerd friends have been secretly telling me that this is what make Amazon Web Services seriously disruptive. It is built taking into account the realties of today’s web applications, and thus can help make web applications truly scale.
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14 comments so far
4:38 AM PT
You’d need to be insane to trust your Web site’s large-scale dataset to Amazon. Until they come out with a for-fee, guaranteed pick-up-the-phone enterprise technical support offering, it’s a huge risk. The service can go down and the only way to deal with these guys is via a little 200-character max Web form, or post on their public forum and hope other users can help you.
6:23 AM PT
[...] (Via GigaOM.) [...]
8:15 AM PT
[...] (limited beta) sporting both RESTful and SOAP interfaces - see the Developer Guide and other good related posts (love the title of that last [...]
10:09 AM PT
@Brian, the fact you can not imagine creative application for AWS without hard SLA does not mean it has no application at all - there are some companies who found and use it already. If you’re in doubt, google for “smugmug aws pdf” and hit first link (should be PDF presentation).
p.s. looks like I had been able to avoid rude comments.
10:11 AM PT
SimpleDB, I guess, is what were AWS fanatics crying for last few months after they realized they need more DB then S3 ;)
11:12 AM PT
Here is a different perspective on SimpleDB:
http://marcelo.sampasite.com/brave-tech-world/Amazon-SimpleDB-What-nobody-is-t.htm
11:47 AM PT
[...] Amazon Launches SimpleDB Cloud Computing Service GIGAOM Amazon continues to expand its web services (cloud computing) offerings. They have just introduced Amazon SimpleDB, a new kind of data base that will help transform their current suite of cloud computing offerings - S3 storage and EC2 computing for example - into a live cloud environment. The Amazon SimpleDB is built on top of Erlang, and is optimized for large data sets, and is schemaless. Source> [...]
11:49 AM PT
[...] December 14, 2007Large scale database now in the cloud Amazon is easily among a handful of companies like Google that get “it” in terms of the quickly developing a connected world we live in. The key to getting “it” is understanding that the way to grow into a giant in the new age is to enable the individual to be more creative and do very big things on a very small scale. By adding a schema free, massively scalable database to their growing suite of cloud computing services, Amazon has done just that. Amazon continues to expand its web services (cloud computing) offerings. They have just introduced Amazon SimpleDB, a new kind of data base that will help transform their current suite of cloud computing offerings - S3 storage and EC2 computing for example - into a live cloud environment. The Amazon SimpleDB is built on top of Erlang, and is optimized for large data sets, and is schemaless. (from Gigaom) [...]
12:16 PM PT
@Brian: You need to be insane if you think that you can offer these “plumbing” services better by yourself. And with Amazonians, you deal with real people with emotions, commitment and pride of their services. Something you can’t say when dealing with the Google (Ad) Machine.
12:22 PM PT
[...] PM PT Comments (0) Amazon continues to amaze us with its Amazon Web Services series of offerings. The latest is SimpleDB, which will be available in limited beta in a few weeks. And it is bound to have a major impact on [...]
1:41 PM PT
[...] new service undoubtedly generated quite a bit of enthusiasm: O’Reilly,TechCrunch…. For some, this is the long awaited “database” in the cloud and is seen as Amazon’s [...]
3:26 PM PT
[...] don’t need to know what either of those do, but what’s interesting is that they are the building blocks of a “cloud computing” model of the kind that Sun Microsystems co-founder and former [...]
1:57 AM PT
Very interesting!- If you can get a real person to pick up the phone and help you if there’s a problem instead of having to get a major law firm track one down in the event of a problem, or if it does not cost you 10 times what it could have if you’d installed your own software, and maintained it yourself, I’d say what a great offering
6:18 AM PT
I for one, can’t wait to see how it performs.
I do get annoyed at the people who complain because of it’s lack of features or that it’s not a full RDBMS.
Er…Simple remember??
cbmeeks
http://codershangout.com
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