Having made book-buying easier, Amazon.com is now seeking to do the same thing for databases…
“Companies can now go ahead and fire their expensive database administrators — those engineers who keep the Oracle or IBM databases humming…”
Amazon has added an enterprise-class database to its collection of “cloud computing” tools for developers. The new service dubbed as “SimpleDB,” offers developers a database on pay-as-use basis, which, as Dave Winer points out, is good news for those with scalability concerns.
The service, currently offered on a limited-release basis, is designed to compliment S3, the company’s online storage service, and EC2, its application hosting service. Those wishing to participate in Amazon.com’s beta service must either already have an account with the company or register for one.
Following news that Amazon would soon be rolling out SimpleDB, analyst Brad Shimmin said Amazon is doing what Google is doing — becoming a provider of hosted services. For enterprises that cannot afford to build their own data centers, Shimmin said, Amazon’s SimpleDB can be an important asset.
Amazon is taking sign-ups for the SimpleDB beta, which should start in a few weeks.
Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud. These services are designed to make web-scale computing easier and more cost-effective for developers.
In contrast, Amazon’s SimpleDB is easy to use and provides the core functionality of a database – real-time lookup and simple querying of structured data – without the operational complexity. Amazon SimpleDB requires no schema, automatically indexes your data and provides a simple API for storage and access. This eliminates the administrative burden of data modeling, index maintenance, and performance tuning.
Developers gain access to this functionality within Amazon’s proven computing environment, are able to scale instantly, and users’ only pay for what they use, at the rate of ‘14 cents’ per machine hour used.
“The machine hours are determined by measuring the use required for every request, on the basis of the capacity of a current-generation 1.7-GHz Xeon processor.”
In addition, there are charges for data in and out; starting at 10 cents per GB in and 18 cents per GB out, although data transferred to other Amazon Web Services is free.
The scalability that Winer touts means if your site languishes in obscurity you need only pay for whatever little space you use, but if your site becomes a sudden success and database demands spike, Amazon handles the load without the need to invest in costly new database servers and replication.
Another advantage SimpleDB has over other options is that it is universally accessible. Many host providers offer databases that are only accessible online, which means to offer an API and allow users to build desktop tools you will need to invest in a more robust system.
Amazon.com is best known as one of the Internet’s founding etailers, but has recently moved into the area of cloud-based computing, competing with players like Microsoft and IBM. The popularity of its services is driven by cost-effective pricing.
Amazon said that, traditionally, this type of functionality has used a clustered relational database, with considerable investment, complexity, and management requirements. Many developers, the company said in a statement, “simply want to store, process, and query their data without worrying about managing schemas, maintaining indexes, tuning performance, or scaling access to their data.”
“Also, unlike a relational database such as PostgresQL or MySQL, Amazon’s SimpleDB does not have a schema, which makes it somewhat more flexible and puts it in league with the alpha database project CouchDB.”
However, SimpleDB may not be as much of a panacea as Winer sees it given some of its limitations. It is called SimpleDB after all.
If a full relational database is needed, the company added, developers can host their own inside the Amazon EC2 environment.
This will be especially attractive for Web startups. Amazon has just taken another major infrastructure cost off the table for them. Relational databases are expensive to buy and maintain. Whatever features or performance SimpleDB lacks, it should make up for in price.
Pricing for SimpleDB is as follows:
Machine Utilization – $0.14 per Amazon SimpleDB Machine Hour consumed
Data Transfer
- $0.10 per GB – all data transfer in
- $0.18 per GB – first 10 TB / month data transfer out
- $0.16 per GB – next 40 TB / month data transfer out
- $0.13 per GB – data transfer out / month over 50 TB
Data transfer “in” and “out” refers to transfer into and out of Amazon SimpleDB. Data transferred between Amazon SimpleDB and other Amazon Web Services is free of charge (i.e., $0.00 per GB).
Structured Data Storage – $1.50 per GB-month
Amazon wants to democratize the database by making it available to more businesses, and even individuals, thus leveling the playing field between big companies and startups even more.
In addition, Amazon SimpleDB keeps multiple copies of each domain. When data is written or updated (using PutAttributes, DeleteAttributes, CreateDomain or DeleteDomain) and Success is returned, all copies of the data updated.
Amazon’s prominence as an Internet company could help propel the growth of accessible computing resources “in the cloud,” for database, storage, processing and other needs. Besides Google, companies that offer some form of database-as-a-service include Caspio Bridge, Dabble DB, Freebase, QuickBase, and Nenest. Cloud-based computing is also being explored by Microsoft, IBM, and others.