Question: Can DynamoDB be used like a relational database?
Answer
DynamoDB is a NoSQL database, which means it is not a traditional relational database like MySQL or PostgreSQL. It does not support using SQL for querying data and does not have the same structure as a relational database with tables, rows, and columns. Instead, it uses a key-value model where each item is identified by a primary key and can have any number of attributes.
However, you can still model your data in a way that mimics the structure of a relational database. For example, you can use secondary indexes to create one-to-many relationships between items in different tables and use queries and scans to retrieve related items. But in general, DynamoDB is better suited to handle high write and read throughputs and high scalability rather than complex relational queries.
Additionally, you can also utilize the concept of Single Table Design to model relational data in DynamoDB. Find out more here.
Other Common DynamoDB FAQ (with Answers)
- What is DynamoDB white paper, and what are the key takeaways?
- How do you enable cloudtrail for DynamoDB?
- Why must table be empty to enable DynamoDB global tables?
- How to grab data from AWS DynamoDB?
- How to write a test case for mocking DynamoDB?
- How do you store JSON on DynamoDB?
- How to access DynamoDB from outside?
- How to store graphs in DynamoDB?
- How to dump multiple DynamoDB tables?
- Is DynamoDB real-time?
- Should you make a new DynamoDB client for each request?
- How many DynamoDB tables can I have at a maximum?
- How to store Japanese characters in DynamoDB?
- How to divert the traffic from S3 to DynamoDB?
- How do parallelize requests in DynamoDB?