Question: How does DynamoDB handle data changes?

Answered by Rafal Wilinski
Answer
DynamoDB handles data changes in a few different ways depending on the type of change being made.
- Put and Update operations: When you use the
Put
operation to add a new item to a table or use theUpdate
operation to modify an existing item, DynamoDB updates the item in the table. These operations are atomic, meaning they update the entire item in a single operation, and the updates are immediately visible to all users. - Delete operations: When you use the Delete operation to remove an item from a table, DynamoDB physically removes the item from the table. These operations are also atomic, meaning they remove the entire item in a single operation, and the deletes are immediately visible to all users.
- Conditional writes: DynamoDB also allows you to perform conditional writes, which only update or delete an item if certain conditions are met. For example, you can use a conditional write to only update an item if its attribute has a certain value or delete an item if it hasn't been modified in a certain amount of time.
- Versioning: DynamoDB provides a " versioning " feature that allows you to enable versioning on your table. With versioning, DynamoDB automatically keeps a history of all the versions of an item, and you can easily access the previous versions of an item.
- Eventual consistency: DynamoDB is designed with a distributed architecture, and it replicates data across multiple servers to ensure durability and availability. In some rare cases, when there is a change to an item, it may take some time for the change to propagate to all the copies of that item. This is known as "Eventual consistency, " a trade-off for high availability and scalability.
It's important to keep in mind that when you're making changes to a DynamoDB table, you should be mindful of your table's performance and capacity and ensure that your updates and deletes are properly monitored and tested.
Other Common DynamoDB FAQ (with Answers)
- Is DynamoDB a memory store?
- Are DynamoDB table names globally unique?
- Is DynamoDB based on MongoDB?
- Can we rename DynamoDB table?
- Does DynamoDB support atomic updates?
- Is DynamoDB certification worth it?
- Is DynamoDB good for analytics?
- Is DynamoDB similar to MongoDB?
- Can DynamoDB store images?
- How do parallelize requests in DynamoDB?
- How to forcefully delete a DynamoDB table?
- Is connection pooling needed for DynamoDB?
- Which AWS regions support DynamoDB?
- Can you store XML in DynamoDB?
- Is DynamoDB highly available?
Spend less time in the AWS console, use Dynobase.
Try 7-day free trial. No strings attached.
Product Features
DynamoDB Tools
DynamoDB Info
© 2025 Dynobase