Chapter 1, Getting to Know SimpleDB, explores SimpleDB and the advantages of utilizing it to build web-scale applications.

Chapter 2, Getting Started with SimpleDB, moves on to set up an AWS account, enable SimpleDB service for the account, and install and set up libraries for Java, PHP, and Python. It also illustrates several SimpleDB operations using these libraries.

Chapter 3, SimpleDB versus RDBMS, sheds light on the differences between SimpleDB and a traditional RDBMS, as well as the pros and cons of using SimpleDB as the storage engine in your application.

Chapter 4, The SimpleDB Data Model, takes a detailed look at the SimpleDB data model and different methods for interacting with a domain, its items, and their attributes. It further talks about the domain metadata and reviews the various constraints imposed by SimpleDB on domains, items, and attributes.

Chapter 5, Data Types, discusses the techniques needed for storing different data types in SimpleDB, and explores a technique for storing numbers, Boolean values, and dates. It also teaches you about XML-restricted characters and encoding them using base64 encoding.

Chapter 6, Querying, describes the Select syntax for retrieving results from SimpleDB, and looks at the various operators and how to create predicates that allow you to get back the information you need.

Chapter 7, Storing Data on S3, introduces you to Amazon S3 and its use for storing large files. It practically modifies a sample domain to add additional metadata including a file key that is again used for naming the MP3 file uploaded to S3. The example used in this chapter shows you a simple way to store metadata on SimpleDB while storing associated content that is in the form of binary files on Amazon S3.

Chapter 8, Tuning and Usage Costs, mainly covers the BoxUsage of different SimpleDB queries and the usage costs, along with viewing the usage activity reports.

Chapter 9, Caching, explains memcached and Cache_Lite in detail and their use for caching. It further explores a way you can use memcached with SimpleDB to avoid making unnecessary requests to SimpleDB, that is, by using libraries in Java, PHP, and Python.

Chapter 10, Parallel Processing, analyzes how to utilize multiple threads for running parallel operations against SimpleDB in Java, PHP, and Python in order to speed up processing times and taking advantage of the excellent support for concurrency in SimpleDB.

To get started with the book and try out the code samples included here you will need following software:

For Python:

For Java:

For the PHP part:

If you are a developer wanting to build scalable, web-based database applications using SimpleDB, then this book is for you. You do not need to know anything about SimpleDB to read and learn from this book, and no basic knowledge is strictly necessary. This guide will help you to start from scratch and build advanced applications.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "Typica provides a simple way to access the BoxUsage value along with the RequestId, when you query SimpleDB."

A block of code is set as follows:

public static void main(String[] args) {
SimpleDB sdb = new SimpleDB(awsAccessId, awsSecretKey, true);
try {
ListDomainsResult domainsResult = sdb.listDomains();
System.out.println("RequestID : " + domainsResult.getRequestId());
System.out.println("Box Usage : " + domainsResult.getBoxUsage());
} catch (SDBException ex) {
System.out.println(ex.getMessage());
}
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

"Statement":[{
"Effect":"Allow",
"Action":"sdb:*",
"Resource":"arn:aws:sdb:*:123456789012:domain/user*"
"Condition":{
"IpAddress":{
"aws:SourceIp":"192.168.176.0/24"
}
"Bool":{
"aws:SecureTransport":"true"
}
}
}
]

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

memcached -p 12312 -d

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".

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