DynamoDB: Understand The Benefits With Real Life Use Cases

Building a web application is always exciting for a newbie software engineer. As a web developer, you might have started with building the frontend then backend and then you add features one by one. You choose some database for your application to store the information. Now your web application starts growing and you start getting the users for that. 100, 1000, 10000 and so on…..but what if the users will keep growing? Will it be possible that your current database can handle millions of users? If not then it can create a problem for you. You will have to migrate to another more scalable database. This is one of the reasons a software engineer has to think and consider all the case scenarios before they start building something.

A lot of web applications face scaling issues due to the growth of users along with the increasing complexity of data traffic. Business comes the need to process data faster and here comes the part of DynamoDB. DynamoDB is a NoSQL database of Amazon Web Services that supports data structures and key-valued cloud services. It is a fast, flexible, cost-effective, highly-scalable, fault-tolerant, and secure database service. You can scale from 10 to 1000 transactions per second (tps) in a couple of seconds. Now the question is what are some major benefits of using DynamoDB? How to decide that this is the right database for your application. What are some of its real-life use cases and what is the downside of using this database? Let’s discuss everything in detail.

DynamoDB is a cloud-based database service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It’s a NoSQL database, meaning it stores data differently than traditional relational databases.

Key Features

• Fast and Scalable: It delivers high performance with quick response times and can automatically adjust its capacity to handle changing data volumes.
• Easy to Manage: As a fully managed service, you don’t need to worry about maintaining the database itself.
• Secure: It offers features like access control to keep your data safe.
• Flexible: It can handle various data structures and automatically deletes old data if needed.
• Works well with AWS: Integrates seamlessly with other AWS services for a cohesive cloud experience.

Let’s discuss first why DynamoDB is useful for your application.

1. Performance and Scalability

People who are working in software development or IT industry know that when there is a load on a database or when more traffic then scaling databases become difficult and risky. DynamoDB can auto-scale by tracking how close your usage is to the upper bounds. This feature helps your system to adjust according to the amount of data traffic and it improves the performance of the application and it reduces cost as well.

2. Access to Control Rules

In the software industry when data gets more specific and personal it becomes more important to have specific access control. You need to easily apply for access control to the right people without creating bottlenecks in other people’s workflow. DynamoDB has the feature of fine-grained access control and that allows the table owner to gain a higher level of control over the data in the table.

3. Persistence of Event Stream Data

DynamoDB stream has this feature that allows you to receive and update item-level data before and after changes in that data. It provides a time-ordered sequence of changes made to the data within the last 24 hours. You can access a stream with a simple API call and make changes to a full-text search data store such as Elasticsearch, push incremental backups to Amazon S3, or maintain an up-to-date read-cache.

4. Time To Live

DynamoDB allows developers to set a timestamp for expired data in your table. Once the timestamp expires, the data that is marked to expire is then deleted from the table. This functionality helps developers to keep track of expired data and delete it automatically instead of doing it manually. TTL also helps in reducing storage and cutting the costs of manual data deletion work.

5. Storage of Inconsistent Schema Items

If you need to store your data object in inconsistent schemas then DynamoDB can manage that. DynamoDB is a NoSQL data model and this the reason that it handles less structured data more efficiently than a relational data model, which is why it’s easier to address query volumes and offers high-performance queries for item storage in inconsistent schemas.

6. Automatic Data Management

DynamoDB makes automatic data management easier by letting you back up your data to the cloud. With DynamoDB Backup and Restore, you can make backups of your tables whenever you want. These backups keep your data safe in the cloud, so you won’t lose it if something goes wrong. You can schedule backups to happen automatically, without having to do it yourself. This feature helps you quickly restore your tables if something unwanted happens to your data.

A lot of developers get confused if they should use DynamoDB or not for their application. If it is fit for their project or not. We are going to mention some examples where companies are using this database to help manage the larger influx and of data at high speeds.

1. Duolingo

Duolingo, an online learning site, relies on the DynamoDB database to store and handle approximately 31 billion data objects on their web server. With around 18 million monthly users engaging in roughly six billion exercises via the Duolingo app, the platform experiences significant traffic. To manage this load, they utilize 24,000 read units per second and 3,300 write units per second. DynamoDB stands out as the sole database meeting their requirements for both data storage and DevOps

2. Hess Corporation

This corporation is a well-known energy company. The company works on the exploration and production of natural gas and crude oil. This corporation also uses DynamoDB and shifted its E&P (Energy Exploration and Production) project onto AWS. The operational infrastructure of DynamoDB helps the company to handle data effectively and get optimized and well-managed results It also helped the company in separating potential buyers’ data from business systems.

3. GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare is known for the medical imaging equipment that helps in diagnostics through radiopharmaceuticals and imaging agents. This company also uses DynamoDB to increase customer value, enabled by cloud access, storage, and computation. The GE Health Cloud provides a single portal for healthcare professionals all over the US to process and share images of patient cases.

4. Docomo

Docomo is a popular mobile phone operating company. The company is known for its voice recognition services, which need the best performance and capacity. This is the reason Docomo turned towards DynamoDB which has helped the company scale towards better performance. The company also relies heavily on Amazon DynamoDB to store its marketing data of different types. The data includes user events, user profiles, visited links, and clicks. Sometimes, this data also includes ad targeting, attribution, and real-time bidding.

Also Read

• DynamoDB – Introduction
• Key Features Of DynamoDB
• AWS DynamoDB – Creating a Table

DynamoDB is a reliable system that helps small, medium, and large enterprises scale their applications. You can use it for mobile and web apps. It provides the option to backup, restore, and secure data. You can build event-driven architecture and user-friendly applications with DynamoDB. We have discussed the major benefits of using DynamoDB but every database has some pros and cons and the same for the DynamoDB. DynamoDB is a NoSQL database. That means you can not do joining or complex queries on DynamoDB. Also, No ACID as it’s not an RDBMS. DynamoDB‘s not ideal for storing events as well. Understand your requirements very well and then choose the database according to your needs.

Why should I choose DynamoDB for my application?

DynamoDB offers several benefits, including high performance, scalability, fine-grained access control, persistence of event stream data, time-to-live functionality, and support for storing items with inconsistent schemas.

Can DynamoDB handle automatic data management?

Yes, DynamoDB provides features for automatic data management, such as backups to the cloud, scheduled backups, and automatic deletion of expired data using Time to Live (TTL).

What are some real-life use cases of DynamoDB?

Companies like Duolingo, Hess Corporation, GE Healthcare, and Docomo rely on DynamoDB for various applications, including handling large amounts of user data, managing operational infrastructure, and storing marketing data.

What are the limitations of using DynamoDB?

The limitations of DynamoDB are it does not support complex queries or joins, it does not provide ACID transactions like traditional relational databases, and it may not be ideal for storing event data.