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Rules for Data Modeling with DynamoDB

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Re: Rules for Data Modeling with DynamoDB

#11

Post by mulmen »

abd12 wrote: post #2

Author here! If you want more, I just released a book on DynamoDB yesterday --> https://www.dynamodbbook.com/ . There's a launch discount for the next few days. The book is highly recommended by folks at AWS, including Rick Houlihan, the leader of the NoSQL Blackbelt Team at AWS[0]. Happy to answer any questions you have! Also available on Twitter and via email (I'm easily findable). [0] - https://twitter.com/houliha…

Very exciting! Is there any plan to release a physical copy? With reference books I much prefer something I can put on my desk.

Re: Rules for Data Modeling with DynamoDB

#12

Post by abd12 »

mulmen wrote: post #11
abd12 wrote: post #2

Author here! If you want more, I just released a book on DynamoDB yesterday --> https://www.dynamodbbook.com/ . There's a launch discount for the next few days. The book is highly recommended by folks at AWS, including Rick Houlihan, the leader of the NoSQL Blackbelt Team at AWS[0]. Happy to answer any questions you have! Also available on Twitter and via email (I'm easily findable). [0] - https://twitter.com/houliha…

Very exciting! Is there any plan to release a physical copy? With reference books I much prefer something I can put on my desk.

Thanks! Honestly, I'm right with you. I would love a physical copy. I did a bit of research and didn't find any great options for making a physical copy of a self-published book for the number of copies I'm expecting to sell (given it's a fairly niche technical area).

That said, if anyone has any great recommendations here, I'm all ears. Actual experience would be best if possible, rather than the first thing you see in Google :).

Re: Rules for Data Modeling with DynamoDB

#13

Post by cityzen »

mabbo wrote: post #3
abd12 wrote: post #2

Author here! If you want more, I just released a book on DynamoDB yesterday --> https://www.dynamodbbook.com/ . There's a launch discount for the next few days. The book is highly recommended by folks at AWS, including Rick Houlihan, the leader of the NoSQL Blackbelt Team at AWS[0]. Happy to answer any questions you have! Also available on Twitter and via email (I'm easily findable). [0] - https://twitter.com/houliha…

After seeing Rick's Re:invent talk, the one where at about minute 40 everyones' heads exploded, I emailed him (I'm in a very far away other department of Amazon) to ask him for more, because everything he was saying was absolutely not the way my group was using DynamoDB (ie: we were doing it wrong). He could have ignored my email entirely. He's a busy guy, right? I wouldn't have held it against him at all. Instead, h…

Shout out to Rick Houlihan! I even made my wife watch his 2018 talk!

Re: Rules for Data Modeling with DynamoDB

#14

Post by ithrow »

Curious, besides being a truly serverless and scalable database why else would one choose to model relational data in DynamoDB? For the 'single table design' scheme the author talks about you are in a world of hurt if you need new access patterns? which is highly probable for most systems.

Re: Rules for Data Modeling with DynamoDB

#15

Post by Thaxll »

ithrow wrote: post #14

Curious, besides being a truly serverless and scalable database why else would one choose to model relational data in DynamoDB? For the 'single table design' scheme the author talks about you are in a world of hurt if you need new access patterns? which is highly probable for most systems.

Because it's managed and works "forever".

Re: Rules for Data Modeling with DynamoDB

#16

Post by ithrow »

Thaxll wrote: post #15
ithrow wrote: post #14

Curious, besides being a truly serverless and scalable database why else would one choose to model relational data in DynamoDB? For the 'single table design' scheme the author talks about you are in a world of hurt if you need new access patterns? which is highly probable for most systems.

Because it's managed and works "forever".

Already implied that in "truly serverless and scalable database". My point is that it would be very dumb to not use something like postgres for relational data unless you really need those dynamodb features.

Re: Rules for Data Modeling with DynamoDB

#17

Post by kpmah »

> Normalization was built for a world with very different assumptions. In the data centers of the 1980s, storage was at a premium and compute was relatively cheap. But the times have changed. Storage is cheap as can be, while compute is at a premium.

Normalisation isn't primarily about about saving storage, it's about avoiding update anomalies i.e. correctness.

Re: Rules for Data Modeling with DynamoDB

#18

Post by abd12 »

ithrow wrote: post #14

Curious, besides being a truly serverless and scalable database why else would one choose to model relational data in DynamoDB? For the 'single table design' scheme the author talks about you are in a world of hurt if you need new access patterns? which is highly probable for most systems.

I think there are some features of DynamoDB that are miles ahead of other databases:

- Billing model. Pay for reads and writes directly rather than trying to guess how your queries turn into CPU & RAM. Also able to scale reads and writes up and down independently, or use pay-per-use pricing to avoid capacity planning.

- Permissions model: Integrates tightly with AWS IAM so works well with AWS compute (EC2, ECS/EKS, Lambda) with IAM roles. Don't need to think about credential management and rotation.

- Queries will perform the same as you scale. It's going to work the exact same in testing and staging as it is in prod. You don't need to rewrite when you get four times as many users.

A lot of folks are worried about migrations, but they're not as bad as you think. I've got a whole chapter on how to handle migrations. Plus, one of the examples imagines that we're re-visiting a previous example a year later and want to add new objects and change some access patterns. I show how it all works, and they're really not that scary.

Re: Rules for Data Modeling with DynamoDB

#19

Post by abd12 »

kpmah wrote: post #17

> Normalization was built for a world with very different assumptions. In the data centers of the 1980s, storage was at a premium and compute was relatively cheap. But the times have changed. Storage is cheap as can be, while compute is at a premium. Normalisation isn't primarily about about saving storage, it's about avoiding update anomalies i.e. correctness.

Great point! It was originally about both of these things, but the storage aspect isn't discussed much anymore because it's really not a concern.

The data integrity issue is still a concern, and I talk about that in the book. You need to manage data integrity in your application and think about how to handle updates properly. But it's completely doable and many people have.

Re: Rules for Data Modeling with DynamoDB

#20

Post by time0ut »

abd12 wrote: post #2

Author here! If you want more, I just released a book on DynamoDB yesterday --> https://www.dynamodbbook.com/ . There's a launch discount for the next few days. The book is highly recommended by folks at AWS, including Rick Houlihan, the leader of the NoSQL Blackbelt Team at AWS[0]. Happy to answer any questions you have! Also available on Twitter and via email (I'm easily findable). [0] - https://twitter.com/houliha…

Rick is awesome. Bought the book without hesitation. Can't wait to dig through it.

I've used DynamoDB in production (small scales only sadly) on a number of projects. Definitely done it the wrong way a few times!

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