Published on December 22, 2020
Category: Amazon DynamoDB
The year 2020 proved to be another dynamic period for Amazon DynamoDB, filled with significant advancements aimed at enhancing user experience in reliability, encryption, speed, scalability, and flexibility. This recap of 2020 outlines the notable updates and features released throughout the year, organized alphabetically by category and chronologically within each category. For those who may find it difficult to stay updated on the service’s evolution, this concise, one-page summary serves as an excellent way to catch up on the developments in DynamoDB. Should you have any inquiries, feel free to reach out to us @DynamoDB.
Amazon CloudWatch Application Insights
June 8 – Amazon CloudWatch Application Insights expanded its capabilities to support MySQL, DynamoDB, custom logs, and more. This enhancement allows for improved observability across applications, enabling users to easily set up monitoring for these databases on Amazon CloudWatch and identify common issues like slow queries and transaction conflicts.
Amazon CloudWatch Contributor Insights for DynamoDB
April 2 – Now accessible in the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions, CloudWatch Contributor Insights for DynamoDB offers a diagnostic overview of traffic trends for your DynamoDB tables. This tool aids in identifying the most accessed keys within your tables, allowing for continuous monitoring of item access patterns and generating helpful visualizations to better understand your application’s traffic. This is an excellent resource for those looking to optimize their usage.
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for DynamoDB
November 23 – A new feature now allows you to capture item-level changes in your DynamoDB tables using Amazon Kinesis Data Streams. By enabling streaming to a Kinesis data stream with a single click in the DynamoDB console, you can build advanced streaming applications seamlessly.
AWS Pricing Calculator
November 23 – The AWS Pricing Calculator has been updated to include DynamoDB, enabling users to estimate costs for their DynamoDB workloads, covering aspects such as on-demand capacity and backup features.
Backup and Restore
November 23 – Restoring DynamoDB tables is now even more efficient, reducing table restore times while accommodating workloads with varying write patterns. You can also exclude certain secondary indexes from the restored tables to further accelerate the process.
September 23 – The ability to restore DynamoDB table backups as new tables is now available in regions including Africa (Cape Town) and Europe (Milan).
February 18 – AWS expanded this feature to more regions, allowing for greater flexibility in data recovery.
Data Export to Amazon S3
November 9 – You can now effortlessly export DynamoDB table data to your Amazon S3 data lake for scalable analytics. This capability enables users to leverage other AWS services like Amazon Athena and SageMaker to derive insights from their data without any coding requirements.
DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)
August 11 – DAX now features next-gen, memory-optimized Amazon EC2 R5 nodes, which help enhance performance for high-demand applications.
February 6 – New CloudWatch metrics for DAX provide deeper insights into cluster performance, allowing for better scaling decisions based on utilization rates.
DynamoDB Local
May 21 – The local version of DynamoDB has introduced support for empty values in non-key String and Binary attributes, as well as transactions involving up to 25 unique items. This feature allows for cost-effective development and testing in local environments.
Empty Values for Non-Key Attributes
June 1 – Support for empty values in non-key String and Binary attributes is now available in the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions, providing greater flexibility in data handling.
May 18 – This feature was also added to DynamoDB tables, enhancing its usability for various applications.
Encryption
November 6 – Users can now encrypt their global tables in DynamoDB using customer-managed keys, providing full control over encryption and comprehensive monitoring through AWS CloudTrail.
Global Tables
October 6 – DynamoDB global tables have expanded into the Europe (Milan) and Europe (Stockholm) Regions, facilitating local access for globally scaled applications. This feature is crucial for disaster recovery and high availability.
April 8 – Global tables are also available in China’s Beijing and Ningxia Regions, further enhancing the service’s reach.
March 16 – An easy update process allows users to enhance their global tables’ availability without incurring additional costs.
For more insights on this topic, check out this blog post by Chanci Turner, who is an authority on the subject.
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