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Thread: The end is nigh for SimpleDB?
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Replies:
9
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Last Post:
Nov 17, 2009 2:46 AM
by: Mark Rendle
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52
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12/10/08
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The end is nigh for SimpleDB?
Posted:
Oct 27, 2009 1:29 AM PDT
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With the announcement regarding Amazon RDS, one has to wonder if it was worth the investment to learn how to build applications totally in the cloud with SimpleDB?
Will SimpleDB still be around in two years time?
I wonder ...
Roger
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20
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11/24/06
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Re: The end is nigh for SimpleDB?
Posted:
Oct 27, 2009 2:57 AM PDT
in response to: Roger Moffatt
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My first thoughts exacty. I have invested in SimpleDB and obviously this new RDS is a much better option but does this mean I need to move? SimpleDB now does exactly what I'd like it too. I doubt Amazon are going to continue investment in SDB with the RDS on the horizon. It also means there will be no new third party development in SDB too meaning what we have is all we ever will however long it lasts.
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2,027
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3/15/06
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Re: The end is nigh for SimpleDB?
Posted:
Oct 27, 2009 3:34 AM PDT
in response to: lowbobino
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I don't think that's true. They are two very different services. RDS is, at it's core, MySQL and so brings with it all of the good and bad things about MySQL. Yes, it has tons of features that SimpleDB doesn't have but it's also very complex, mainly scales vertically, is complicated to manage and is costly to run (i.e. big dedicated servers).
I think SimpleDB is a great complement to RDS and is consistent with the very popular NoSQL database trend. It's super-easy to use, trivial to manage and relatively cheap to run. And it scales.
If I were currently managing my own MySQL servers in AWS I would seriously consider switching to RDS but it's not really a replacement for SimpleDB.
Mitch
I decided to do a short blog post about this. If you are interested,
http://www.elastician.com/2009/10/rds-end-of-simpledb.html.
Message was edited by: M. Garnaat
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60
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11/16/07
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Re: The end is nigh for SimpleDB?
Posted:
Oct 27, 2009 7:52 AM PDT
in response to: lowbobino
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I'm just curious, how is it that RDS is a "much better option" exactly? It doesn't scale nearly to the level of SDB, and it still relies on a single EC2 instance under the hood. The "Scalability" aspect of RDS is really quite overstated.
With the addition of MySQL Clustering, it might come close, but still think of the simplest use case.
I access my DB every once in a while. With RDS, I pay the full $0.11c/hour as long as it's available. With SDB I pay only for the time it's being used. Additionally, SDB can have a billion records in it without slowing it down, with RDS/MySQL it'll slow things down to a crawl.
That being said, having the ability to do snapshots and restores to points-in-time is nice for RDS, and it would be nice to have that in SDB too..
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548
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12/28/07
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Re: The end is nigh for SimpleDB?
Posted:
Oct 27, 2009 9:08 AM PDT
in response to: Roger Moffatt
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With the announcement regarding Amazon RDS, one has to wonder if it was worth the investment to learn how to build applications totally in the cloud with SimpleDB?
I think people have been wondering if it is worth it all along. Eventual consistency is different. It's unwise to make investments without considering the cost.
RDS looks like a great opportunity to outsource the maintenance without having to embrace the "different." I cringe a little bit when I see people trying to coerce SimpleDB apps into behaving like relational db apps because I fear they will end up dissatisfied.
I don't think NOSQL has crossed the chasm yet. I don't know if it will, only time will tell. SimpleDB is not as wildly popular as S3 and EC2, that much is obvious. I think Microsoft found out as much with its own NOSQL service, which was much more central, but now sits on a more back-seat-cloud in the form of Azure Table. But SQL Azure didn't signal the end of Azure Table.
When I consider the future prospects for SimpleDB I look at the AWS attitude towards it. The steady pace of improvements over the past 12 months suggest to me that Amazon's commitment to the service has not flagged.
I think talking about the differences between SimpleDB and RDS will be a much better conversation than one about SimpleDB and MySQL. They have more in common, so the remaining differences become easier to discuss.
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2,027
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3/15/06
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Re: The end is nigh for SimpleDB?
Posted:
Oct 27, 2009 12:54 PM PDT
in response to: Mocky Habeeb
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Now, if they would just introduce that SQS-style ACL mechanism, that would REALLY convince me they were serious about this 8^)
Mitch
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62
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11/10/08
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Re: The end is nigh for SimpleDB?
Posted:
Oct 30, 2009 12:11 PM PDT
in response to: M. Garnaat
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Thanks for everyone's interest and commentary. Rest assured, AWS remains fully committed to and excited about Amazon SimpleDB. As our CTO Werner Vogels pointed out
on his blog
recently, "a significant portion of the structured data world does not require RDBMS features such as complex transactions and relations, and can be served by a simpler, much more agile system." It is for these users that we'll continue to innovate and invest in SimpleDB. Look for more commentary from us on the suite of AWS structured storage options in the near future.
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Posts:
39
Registered:
3/23/09
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Re: The end is nigh for SimpleDB?
Posted:
Oct 30, 2009 1:06 PM PDT
in response to: Brett@AWS
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Thanks for chiming in. It seemed to make sense to me that there would be a place for SimpleDB. In the brown bags, though, it is always stated that you guys can't comment on the future, so I have been concerned that we'd just twist in the wind wondering about this.
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62
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11/10/08
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Re: The end is nigh for SimpleDB?
Posted:
Nov 3, 2009 10:47 AM PST
in response to: Darryl Whitmore
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For more commentary on this point, we encourage you to read AWS Distinguished Engineer James Hamilton's recent blog post "
One Size Does Not Fit All
" in which he discusses the variety of needs within the "world of structured storage."
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Posts:
1
Registered:
11/8/09
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Re: The end is nigh for SimpleDB?
Posted:
Nov 17, 2009 2:46 AM PST
in response to: Roger Moffatt
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RDBMS is not the best solution for everything. I've been doing performance testing for a new project with tens of millions of data items and the results past a couple of million rows with MySQL were appalling, whereas SimpleDB has scaled up without a problem. It requires a different approach to designing your data structure, but I can think of several systems I've worked on in the past where at least some of the storage would have benefited from the SimpleDB approach.
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