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The DynamoDB Book: Data Modeling with NoSQL and DynamoDB

dynamodbbook.com

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Re: The DynamoDB Book: Data Modeling with NoSQL and DynamoDB

#11

Post by abd12 »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #9
abd12 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough! IMO, it's worth it :). You could spend a bunch of time cobbling together free resources, and you'd still only get about 30% of what's in the book. How much is your time worth as a software engineer? That said, a few notes: 1. I added a coupon code ('HACKERNEWS') to knock $20 off Basic, $30 off Plus, and $50 off Premium. 2. If you're from a country where PPP makes this pretty expensive, hit me up. I'm hap…

Your book does an excellent job explaining the single-table design pattern of DynamoDB. This pattern literally saves you money. So at a certain point you will earn back the $79 from a lower AWS bill (plus your applications will be much faster!)

Thanks, Matthew! Appreciate it, and I agree with you :)

Re: The DynamoDB Book: Data Modeling with NoSQL and DynamoDB

#12

Post by seibelj »

DynamoDB is monster scale but... tricky to use and difficult pricing model. The paying for writers / readers thing is strange to me and makes it difficult to scale up for bursts. I recommend not using this tech for most things. You need to know exactly why you want to use it and have a good reason.

Re: The DynamoDB Book: Data Modeling with NoSQL and DynamoDB

#13

Post by znpy »

cityzen wrote: post #8
Niccizero wrote: post #4

$79 for the basic package? A bit pricey if you ask me.

If your rate is low enough that you can learn everything that is in this book for $80 worth of your time, then sure. Price is relative, it's not like he's selling prescription drugs for $1000 per pill. I bought it and have found it to be completely worth the money. I don't look at prices for these things in relation to how much other books cost but how much time it will save me.

Yeah I think that the medical comparison is a good idea.

We tend to criticize people for asking decent amount of money in our industry whereas people on others industries shamelessly ask for ludicrous amount of money even for pretty much anything (think medical or legal)

Re: The DynamoDB Book: Data Modeling with NoSQL and DynamoDB

#14

Post by [deleted] »

cityzen wrote: post #8
Niccizero wrote: post #4

$79 for the basic package? A bit pricey if you ask me.

If your rate is low enough that you can learn everything that is in this book for $80 worth of your time, then sure. Price is relative, it's not like he's selling prescription drugs for $1000 per pill. I bought it and have found it to be completely worth the money. I don't look at prices for these things in relation to how much other books cost but how much time it will save me.

[deleted]

Re: The DynamoDB Book: Data Modeling with NoSQL and DynamoDB

#15

Post by abarrettwilsdon »

I bought this a few weeks ago and am about 130 pages in.

It is just stunning how much better it is learning Dynamo/NoSQL in general from this than effectively any other source. Anyone who's had to rely on AWS docs knows how face-meltingly dense they can be.

I went back and refactored all my previous Dynamo work last night, and the difference was night and day. I'm planning to migrate some relational structures later this week, as well.

Is good book.

Re: The DynamoDB Book: Data Modeling with NoSQL and DynamoDB

#16

Post by eloff »

abd12 wrote: post #3

Waves Author here. Happy to answer any questions folks have about the book, about DynamoDB, or about self-publishing. NoSQL modeling is waaay different than relational modeling. I think a lot of NoSQL advice out there is pretty bad, which results in people dismissing the technology altogether. I've been working with DynamoDB for a few years now, and there's no way I'll go back. The book has been available for about a…

The biggest problem I'm aware of with DynamoDB is the hot key / partition issue[1]. Throughout is distributed evenly across nodes, you can't control how many nodes you have, so you always have a node that's hot either temporarily or permanently and so you end up having to over provision all your nodes to be able to handle that hot case, which ends up costing far more than alternatives. What's your take on this? This is the chief reason I avoid DynamoDB, which in theory would be a good fit for some of my problems.

[1] https://syslog.ravelin.com/you-probably-shouldnt-use-dynamod...

Re: The DynamoDB Book: Data Modeling with NoSQL and DynamoDB

#17

Post by mellavora »

Niccizero wrote: post #4

$79 for the basic package? A bit pricey if you ask me.

Alex was super-helpful to me. I had an edge-case problem using batch writes; the issue was assembling the batch in R to pass through the paws api, basically a bunch of really tricky nested lists, and I had one element out of place.

Alex answered my questions in such a way that I myself saw where the bug was in my code.

He saved me easily several hours of time.

At my hourly rate, this means that the book had a negative cost in my case.

I was able to repay the favor, I suggested an improvement to one code example in the book which Alex eagerly accepted.

Re: The DynamoDB Book: Data Modeling with NoSQL and DynamoDB

#19

Post by maerF0x0 »

seibelj wrote: post #12

DynamoDB is monster scale but... tricky to use and difficult pricing model. The paying for writers / readers thing is strange to me and makes it difficult to scale up for bursts. I recommend not using this tech for most things. You need to know exactly why you want to use it and have a good reason.

> makes it difficult to scale up for bursts

Can you tell me why the On Demand mode doesnt work for you?

Re: The DynamoDB Book: Data Modeling with NoSQL and DynamoDB

#20

Post by luhn »

eloff wrote: post #16
abd12 wrote: post #3

Waves Author here. Happy to answer any questions folks have about the book, about DynamoDB, or about self-publishing. NoSQL modeling is waaay different than relational modeling. I think a lot of NoSQL advice out there is pretty bad, which results in people dismissing the technology altogether. I've been working with DynamoDB for a few years now, and there's no way I'll go back. The book has been available for about a…

The biggest problem I'm aware of with DynamoDB is the hot key / partition issue[1]. Throughout is distributed evenly across nodes, you can't control how many nodes you have, so you always have a node that's hot either temporarily or permanently and so you end up having to over provision all your nodes to be able to handle that hot case, which ends up costing far more than alternatives. What's your take on this? This…

As of a couple years ago, DynamoDB will redistribute throughput between shards based on usage [1], so in theory this should eliminate the hot shard problem. I haven't had a chance to test this in practice, if anybody has hands-on experience I'd love to hear it.

You also finally have a way of identifying hot keys with the terribly named CloudWatch Contributor Insights for DynamoDB. [2]

For exceptional use cases, you also have the option of On-Demand Capacity to pay for what you use and not worry about capacity at all. [3]

[1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerg...

[2] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerg...

[3] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerg...

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