Question: How to ensure delete integrity in DynamoDB?

Answered by Rafal Wilinski
Answer
There are many ways to ensure delete integrity in DynamoDB. One approach is to use a soft delete pattern, where a marker attribute is added to the item instead of deleting an item to indicate that it has been deleted. This allows you to restore the item if necessary easily and also allows you to filter out deleted items when querying the table.
Another approach is to use a time-to-live (TTL) attribute on your items, which automatically deletes items after a certain amount of time. This can be useful for automatically cleaning up old or expired data.
You can also use conditional deletes, which only delete an item if certain conditions are met. For example, you can use a conditional delete to only delete an item if its attribute has a certain value or hasn't been modified in a specific time.
Using Dynobase, you can also use the "Time to Live" feature to help you set a time-to-live attribute on your items. This feature also gives you a visual representation of the items that have expired and the items that will expire soon.
It is also important to remember that when you delete an item in DynamoDB, its associated indexes are also deleted, which can lead to performance issues if you're not careful. So it's always a good practice to test your deletes and to monitor your table's performance before and after.
Other Common DynamoDB FAQ (with Answers)
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- What are the best alternatives to DynamoDB?
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