Amazon Web Services released SimpleDB, a web service for “running queries on structured data in real time,” to limited BETA today. SimpleDB is a schema-less data storage service that provides automatic indexing of data, a RESTful API for storage and access, and a pay-as-you-go billing model.

Highlights

• Simple - RESTful interface makes using the service easy (we Rails folks love REST)
• Flexible - you aren’t locked into a schema, indexing is automatic
• Scalable - create new domains on demand
• Fast - built using Erlang; quick and efficient storage model
• Reliable - data is stored redundantly inside the Amazon high-availability data centers
• Ease of Integration - created to easily integrate with other Amazon Web Services
• Inexpensive - as with other offering, SimpleDB is pay-as-you-go

Terminology

• Domain - the “bucket” where your structured data is stored; you run queries against a domain
• Items - the structured data that you store in a domain; comprised of attribute-value (av) pairs; can have 256 attribute values; each attribute can be between 1 and 1,024 bytes

Functionality

• CREATE a new domain to store your items
• GET, PUT, and DELETE items in your domain with their av pairs; automatic indexing is performed as items are stored
• QUERY the data using =, !=, <, >, <=, >=, STARTS-WITH, AND, OR, NOT, INTERSECTION, and UNION; query time is limited to 5 seconds (so it better be fast)

Pricing

Machine Utilization

• $0.14 per Amazon SimpleDB Machine Hour consumed (based on querying)

Data Transfer

• $0.10 per GB - all transfer in
• $0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
• $0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
• 0.13 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB

Structured Data Storage

• $1.50 per GB-month

Final Thoughts

A relational database is a limiting factor for any web-based application. The database is limited to the partition on which it sits, and the ability to scale up depends on how quickly you can add to the storage pool on which the database server sits. If you are not in control of the hardware that houses your app, scalability is restricted.

Companies like Google use the file system (optimized of course) as the database, and solutions such as CouchDB and RDDB are very interesting to us. SimpleDB from Amazon is definitely a step in the right direction.

Here at ADS we work with Amazon Web Services quite extensively and are looking forward to using SimpleDB. We will stay on the lookout for a Ruby library and will post as soon as one is released.

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