The top 20 most-viewed Amazon DynamoDB documentation pages in 2018

The following 20 pages were the most viewed Amazon DynamoDB documentation pages in 2018. I have included a brief description with each link to explain what each page covers. Use this list to see what other AWS customers have been viewing and perhaps to pique your own interest in a topic you’ve been meaning to explore.

1. What Is Amazon DynamoDB?
   This brief introduction to DynamoDB also serves as the welcome page in the DynamoDB Developer Guide.
2. Working with Queries
   The DynamoDB Query operation finds items based on primary key values. You can query any table or secondary index that has a composite primary key (a partition key and a sort key).
3. Setting Up DynamoDB Local (Downloadable Version)
   The downloadable version of DynamoDB lets you write and test applications without accessing the DynamoDB web service. When you’re ready to deploy your application in production, you can make a few minor changes to the code so that it uses the DynamoDB web service.
4. Getting Started with DynamoDB
   Language-specific, hands-on tutorials to help you learn about DynamoDB. The sample code in these tutorials can run against either DynamoDB local or the DynamoDB web service.
5. Limits in DynamoDB
   These current DynamoDB limits (or lack thereof, in some cases) apply on a per-region basis unless otherwise specified.
6. DynamoDB Core Components
   In DynamoDB, tables, items, and attributes are the core components that you work with. A table is a collection of items, and each item is a collection of attributes.
7. Query
   Use the KeyConditionExpression parameter to provide a specific value for the partition key. The Query operation returns all of the items from the table or index with that partition key value.
8. Best Practices for DynamoDB
   Quickly find recommendations for maximizing performance and minimizing throughput costs when working with DynamoDB.
9. Working with Items in DynamoDB
   In DynamoDB, an item is a collection of attributes, and each attribute has a name and a value. DynamoDB provides four operations for basic create/read/update/delete (CRUD) functionality.
10. Read/Write Capacity Mode
    DynamoDB has two read/write capacity modes for processing reads and writes on your tables: on-demand and provisioned.
11. Amazon DynamoDB: How It Works
    This overview covers DynamoDB service components and how they interact.
12. Node.js and DynamoDB Tutorial
    Learn how to use the AWS SDK for JavaScript to write simple programs to perform DynamoDB operations.
13. Global Secondary Indexes
    Some applications might need to perform many kinds of queries, using a variety of different attributes as query criteria. To support these requirements, you can create one or more global secondary indexes and issue Query requests against these indexes.
14. UpdateItem
    Use ths action to edit an existing item’s attributes, or add a new item to the table if it does not already exist. You can put, delete, or add attribute values.
15. PutItem
    Create a new item, or replace an old item with a new item. If an item that has the same primary key as the new item already exists in the specified table, the new item completely replaces the existing item.
16. Condition Expressions
    To manipulate data in a DynamoDB table, you use the PutItem, UpdateItem, and DeleteItem operations. For these data manipulation operations, you can specify a condition expression to determine which items should be modified.
17. Improving Data Access with Secondary Indexes
    DynamoDB provides fast access to items in a table by specifying primary key values. However, many applications might benefit from having one or more secondary (or alternate) keys available, to allow efficient access to data with attributes other than the primary key. To address this, you can create one or more secondary indexes on a table, and issue Query or Scan requests against these indexes.
18. Python and DynamoDB Tutorial
    Learn how to use the AWS SDK for Python (Boto 3) to write simple programs to perform DynamoDB operations.
19. Update Expressions
    To update an existing item in a table, you use the UpdateItem operation. You must provide the key of the item you want to update. You must also provide an update expression to indicate the attributes you want to modify and the values you want to assign to them.
20. Capturing Table Activity with DynamoDB Streams
    DynamoDB Streams captures a time-ordered sequence of item-level modifications in any DynamoDB table, and stores this information in a log for up to 24 hours. Applications can access this log and view the data items as they appeared before and after they were modified, in near-real time.

In the comments section below, let us know if you would like to see anything on these or other DynamoDB documentation pages expanded or updated to make them more useful to you.

– Israel

About the author

Israel Santos is a senior programmer writer for Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon SimpleDB. He works with other writers and editors to provide and improve documentation for AWS services.