Amazon DynamoDB Announces Binary Data Types

Posted on: Aug 21, 2012

We are happy to announce that DynamoDB now supports two new data types: Binary and Binary Sets.

Using binary data types allows customers to reduce the size of items stored in DynamoDB. This helps customers lower costs in two ways:

  • The smaller items will lower the cost of storage
  • Since smaller items may consume less throughput capacity, they can also lower the cost of throughput

To use binary data types, make sure you have the latest SDK libraries, which you can download at http://aws.amazon.com/code.

The EMR integration with DynamoDB does not yet support binary data types, but we will add this support shortly.

Getting started with Amazon DynamoDB is easy with our free tier of service. To learn more, visit the Amazon DynamoDB Page.