Cloud Computing Info

SimpleDB

SimpleDB was Amazon’s first available (in beta) web service. It is a neat feature but it has its downsides. First, SimpleDB is not a relational database. It is a name/value key pair. For simple lookups, it is highly reliable and scalable. For anything more complicated, it falls apart.

SimpleDB is not ACID compliant and has not referential integrity. For that matter, it has not schemas, tables or relationships. Amazon says that it “eliminates the administrative burden of data modeling”. Some things make me say, “Hmmmmm.”

SimpleDB structures data somewhat like a spreadsheet. Think of columns across and values down.