Cloud architect Forrest Brazeal wrote intriguing article in which he considers shortcomings and advantages of DynamoDB. He interviewed a number of engineers and developers about their experiences with the database service. As great as DynamoDB is – and as rousing as its success stories are – it has also left plenty of failed implementations in its wake.
The First Law of DynamoDB: Assume that a DynamoDB implementation will be harder, not easier, than using a relational database that you already know.
Some of the points debated in his post:
- DynamoDB is simple – until it doesn’t scale
- DynamoDB is scalable – until it isn’t simple
- Hot keys “gotcha”
I recommend also follow link to a blog post mentioned in the article on pointing that DynamoDB is not necessarily suited to datasets that have a mix of hot and cold records. “The Million Dollar Engineering Problem”. Great read, enjoy!
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