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139: Alex DeBrie - DynamoDB for Relational Database Diehards

Topics include:

  • Does DynamoDB only make sense for things like your cache, or is it a good choice for a primary data store?
  • An overview of the terminology used in DynamoDB and how the terminology compares to a relational database
  • How primary keys work in DynamoDB
  • What data types are available in DynamoDB
  • How DynamoDB is a schemaless database
  • Why it's important to understand your access patterns in advance with DynamoDB, unlike in a relational database
  • Understanding why and how you usually have multiple record types in a single DynamoDB table
  • What "index overloading" is in DynamoDB
  • Understanding partition keys and sort keys
  • How to structure your data in DynamoDB to make it possible to query related data, and how those queries work
  • How secondary indexes work, allowing you to access the same data in different ways
  • How to accommodate access patterns you didn't know about before you designed your schema
  • When to flatten relationships vs. nest them
  • Should you use DynamoDB if you aren't "web-scale"?
  • How local development works with DynamoDB
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