Database Services
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Included in this chapter:
- EC2-hosted vs AWS-managed databases: who owns what
- The purpose-built database families, and which to pick
- Migrating databases to AWS: AWS DMS and AWS SCT
- Exam-pattern recognition: reading CLF-C02 database stems
Which AWS database service fits the workload
| Workload need | Relational (RDS / Aurora) | Key-value NoSQL (DynamoDB) | In-memory (ElastiCache) | Document / Graph (DocumentDB / Neptune) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data model | Tables, fixed schema, joins | Key-value and document, flexible schema | Key-value held in RAM | JSON documents / graph of nodes and edges |
| Typical use case | Transactional apps, ERP, line-of-business | Web/mobile at scale, gaming, IoT, serverless | Caching, session store, leaderboards | Content catalogs (DocumentDB); social/fraud/recommendations (Neptune) |
| Latency profile | Milliseconds | Single-digit milliseconds at any scale | Microseconds | Milliseconds |
| Scaling style | Vertical + read replicas | Horizontal, near-unlimited, automatic | Add nodes / scale memory | Read replicas in a cluster |
| Server management | Managed (engine maintenance by AWS) | Serverless (no instances to manage) | Managed nodes | Managed cluster |
Decision tree
Cheat sheet
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