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Using Amazon DynamoDB from AWS Explorer
Amazon DynamoDB is a fast, highly scalable, highly available, cost-effective, non-relational database service. Amazon DynamoDB removes traditional scalability limitations on data storage while maintaining low latency and predictable performance. The AWS Toolkit for Eclipse provides functionality for working with Amazon DynamoDB in a development context. For more information about Amazon DynamoDB, see the detail page on the AWS website.
In the AWS Toolkit for Eclipse, AWS Explorer displays all the Amazon DynamoDB tables associated with the active AWS account.
Creating an Amazon DynamoDB Table
Using the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio, you can create a new Amazon DynamoDB table.
To create a new table in AWS Explorer
In AWS Explorer, right-click Amazon DynamoDB, and then click Create Table. The Create New DynamoDB Table wizard appears.
Enter a table name in the Table name box.
Enter a primary hash key attribute in the Hash key attribute box, and select the hash key type from the Hash key type drop-down list. Amazon DynamoDB builds an unordered hash index using the primary key attribute and an optional sorted range index using the range primary key attribute. For more information about the primary hash key attribute, go to the Primary Key section in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide.
Optionally, specify a range primary key by selecting Use a range key. Enter a range key attribute in the Range key attribute box, and select a range key type from the Range key type drop-down list.
Specify the number of read capacity units in the Read capacity units box, and specify the number of write capacity units in the Write capacity units box. You must specify a mimimum of 3 read capacity units and 5 write capacity units. For more information about read and write capacity units, go to the Provisioned Throughput in Amazon DynamoDB section in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide.
Click Finish to create the table. Click the refresh button in AWS Explorer to view your new table in the table list.
Viewing an Amazon DynamoDB Table as a Grid
To open a grid view of one of your Amazon DynamoDB tables, double-click the subnode in AWS Explorer that corresponds to the table. From the grid view, you can view the items, attributes, and values stored in the table. Each row corresponds to an item in the table. The table columns correspond to attributes. Each cell of the table holds the values associated with that attribute for that item.
An attribute can have a value that is a string or a number. Some attributes have a value that consists of a set of strings or numbers. Set values are displayed as a comma-separated list enclosed by square brackets.
Editing Attributes and Values
The table grid view is editable; by double-clicking a cell, you can edit the values for the item's corresponding attribute. For set-value attributes, you can also add or delete individual values from the set.
The editing UI enables you not only to change the value of an attribute, but also to change the format of the value for the attribute—with some limitations. For example, any number value can be converted into a string value. If you have a string value, the content of which is a number, such as "125", the editing UI enables you to convert the format of the value from string to number. Also, the editing UI enables you to convert a single-value to a set-value. However, you cannot generally convert from a set-value to a single-value; an exception is when the set-value has, in fact, only one element in the set.
The Edit Values dialog box opens when you are editing a set of values. After editing the attribute value, click Save set to confirm your changes. If you want to discard your changes, click Cancel.
After confirming your changes, the attribute value is displayed in red. This indicates that the attribute has been updated, but that the new value has not been written back to the Amazon DynamoDB database. To write your changes back to Amazon DynamoDB, click File, and then click Save, or press Ctrl+S from the keyboard. To discard your changes, click Scan Table, and when the Toolkit asks if you would like to commit your changes before the Scan, click No.
Scanning an Amazon DynamoDB Table
From the Toolkit, you can perform Scans on your Amazon DynamoDB tables. In a Scan, you define a set of criteria and the Scan returns all items from the table that match your criteria. Scans are expensive operations and should be used with care to avoid disrupting higher-priority production traffic on the table. For more recommendations on safely using the Scan operation, go to the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide.
To perform a Scan on an Amazon DynamoDB table from AWS Explorer
In the grid view, click Add scan condition. A UI appears that enables you to edit a new Scan clause.
In the Scan clause editor, specify the attribute to match against, how it should be matched (Begins With, Contains, etc.), what literal value it should match, and if the value is a string or a number.
Add more Scan clauses as needed for your search. The Scan will return only those items that match the criteria from all of your Scan clauses. Note that the Scan will perform a case-sensitive comparison when matching against string values.
On the button bar at the top of the grid view, click the green play button to run the scan.
To remove a Scan clause, click the red X to the left of each clause.
To return to the view of the table that includes all items, double-click Amazon DynamoDB in AWS Explorer.
Paginating Scan Results
At the top of the view are three buttons.
The second button provides pagination for Scan results.
Export Scan Result to CSV
Clicking the rightmost button exports the results from the current Scan to a CSV file.
