Document history for DynamoDB - Amazon DynamoDB

Document history for DynamoDB

The following table describes the important changes in each release of the DynamoDB Developer Guide from July 3, 2018 onward. For notification about updates to this documentation, you can subscribe to the RSS feed (at the top left corner of this page).

ChangeDescriptionDate

Programming with JavaScript guide

Amazon DynamoDB presents a programming guide for AWS SDK for JavaScript. Learn about the AWS SDK for JavaScript, abstraction layers, configuring connection, handling errors, defining retry policies, managing keep-alive, and more. For more information, see Programming with JavaScript.

March 6, 2024

Programming with AWS SDK for Java 2.x guide

Created a new programming guide that goes in depth about high-level, low-level, and document interfaces, HTTP clients and their configuration, error handling, and addresses the most common configuration settings that you should consider when using the SDK for Java 2.x. For more information, see Programming Amazon DynamoDB with AWS SDK for Java 2.x.

March 5, 2024

Clone tables with NoSQL Workbench

Allow developers to use NoSQL Workbench to copy or clone tables between development environments and regions (DynamoDB Local and DynamoDB web). For more information, see Cloning tables with NoSQL Workbench.

February 26, 2024

Programming with Python guide

Created a new guide that goes in depth about both high level and low level libraries and addresses the most common configuration settings that one should consider when using the Python SDK. For more information, see Programming with Python.

January 5, 2024

Time to live (TTL) topic rewrite

Completely rewrote the TTL section of the guide. The new guide helps you get started with TTL by providing ready-to-use code snippets along the way. The current code snippets provided are in Python and Javascript. For more information, see TTL.

December 20, 2023

Best Practices for Understanding your AWS Billing and Usage Reports

Added a new section that clarifies various usage types and the charges for those usage types in DynamoDB. For more information, see Billing and usage reports.

December 15, 2023

Amazon DynamoDB zero-ETL integration with Amazon OpenSearch Service

Amazon DynamoDB now supports zero-ETL integration with Amazon OpenSearch Service, which lets you perform a search on your DynamoDB data by automatically replicating and transforming it without custom code or infrastructure. For more information, see DynamoDB zero-ETL integration with Amazon OpenSearch Service.

November 28, 2023

Migrating to DynamoDB from a relational database

Created a migration guide to help users understsand how to migrate to DynamoDB from a relational database.

November 27, 2023

Generate sample data with NoSQL Workbench

NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB now supports creating data models directly from sample data model templates to help you design data schemas for your workloads. You can use this feature to get familiar with NoSQL data modeling best practices when building your applications on DynamoDB.

September 28, 2023

Incremental Export to S3

You can now export data that was inserted, updated or deleted, in small increments. With incremental export, you can export changed data ranging from a few megabytes to terabytes with a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, an API call, or the AWS Command Line Interface.

September 26, 2023

Data modeling for DynamoDB

You can now learn more about data modeling with DynamoDB examples that focus on specific use cases, their access patterns, and step-by-step guidance in realizing those access patterns.

July 14, 2023

Troubleshooting section

You can now find troubleshooting content for latency and throttling issues that might occur in your DynamoDB tables.

March 13, 2023

Deletion protection for Amazon DynamoDB

Deletion protection is now available for Amazon DynamoDB tables in all AWS Regions. DynamoDB now makes it possible for you to protect your tables from accidental deletion when performing regular table management operations.

March 8, 2023

AWS CloudFormation support for KDSD in global tables

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for DynamoDB now supports AWS CloudFormation for DynamoDB global tables, which means you can enable streaming to an Amazon Kinesis Data Streams on your DynamoDB global tables with CloudFormation templates.

February 15, 2023

DynamoDB local supports 100 actions per transaction

You can now perform up to 100 actions in a single transaction on DynamoDB local.

February 9, 2023

Using the DynamoDB Well-Architected Lens to optimize your DynamoDB workload

You can now use the DynamoDB Well-Architected Lens, a collection of design principles and guidance that you can use for designing well-architected DynamoDB workloads.

February 3, 2023

PartiQL GovGloud availability

PartiQL—a SQL-compatible query language for Amazon DynamoDB is now supported in AWS GovCloud (US-East) and AWS GovCloud (US-West).

December 21, 2022

Single installation suite for NoSQL Workbench and DynamoDB local

NoSQL Workbench for DynamoDB now includes a guided DynamoDB local installation process to streamline setting up your DynamoDB local development environment.

December 6, 2022

Bulk import from S3

Amazon DynamoDB now makes it easier for you to migrate and load data into new DynamoDB tables by supporting bulk data imports from Amazon S3.

August 18, 2022

Enhanced integration with Service Quotas

Service Quotas now enables you to proactively manage your account and table quotas. You can view current values, set alarms for when your utilization of a quota exceeds a configurable threshold, and more.

June 15, 2022

NoSQL Workbench adds table and GSI support

You can now use NoSQL Workbench for table and global secondary index (GSI) control plane operations such as CreateTable, UpdateTable, and DeleteTable.

June 2, 2022

Standard-infrequent access table class now available in China

Amazon DynamoDB Standard-Infrequent Access table class is available in China Regions. Reduce your DynamoDB costs by up to 60 percent, by using this new table class for tables that store infrequently accessed data.

April 18, 2022

Increase in default service quotas and table management operations

DynamoDB increased the default quota for the number of tables per account and Region from 256 to 2,500 tables, and increased the number of concurrent table management operations from 50 to 500.

March 9, 2022

Optional limiting of items with PartiQL for DynamoDB

DynamoDB can limit the number of items processed in PartiQL for DynamoDB operations as an optional parameter on each request.

March 8, 2022

AWS Backup integration available in China (Beijing and Ningxia) Regions

AWS Backup now integrates with DynamoDB in the China (Beijing and Ningxia) Regions. You can meet compliance and business continuity requirements more easily through enhanced backup features in AWS Backup, such as cross-account and cross-Region backups.

January 26, 2022

Throughput capacity information through PartiQL API calls

DynamoDB can return the throughput capacity consumed by PartiQL API calls to help you optimize your queries and throughput costs.

January 18, 2022

AWS Backup integration

DynamoDB now helps you meet compliance and business continuity requirements more easily through enhanced backup features in AWS Backup, such as cross-account and cross-Region backups.

November 24, 2021

NoSQL Workbench import/export datasets in CSV

NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB now enables you to import and automatically populate sample data to help build and visualize your data models.

October 11, 2021

Filter and retrieve Amazon DynamoDB Streams data-plane activity with AWS CloudTrail

Amazon DynamoDB now provides you more granular control of audit logging by enabling you to filter Streams data-plane API activity in AWS CloudTrail.

September 22, 2021

Updated console

The DynamoDB console is now your default console to help you manage data more easily, simplify your common tasks, and give you faster access to resources and features.

August 25, 2021

DAX SDK For Java 2.x is now available

DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) SDK for Java 2.x is now available and is compatible with the AWS SDK for Java 2.x. You can benefit from the latest features, including non-blocking I/O.

July 29, 2021

NoSQL Workbench feature updates including control plane operations

NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB now helps you run frequent operations more easily to modify and access table data.

July 28, 2021

DynamoDB global tables are now available in the Asia Pacific Region

DynamoDB global tables are now available in the Asia Pacific (Osaka) Region. Replicate your DynamoDB tables automatically across your choice of 22 AWS Regions.

July 28, 2021

DAX is now available in China

DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) is now available in the China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet.

July 28, 2021

DAX encryption in transit

DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) now supports encryption in transit of data between your applications and DAX clusters, and between the nodes within a DAX cluster.

July 24, 2021

CloudFormation and CloudTrail integration

Integration with AWS CloudFormation and security enhancements with CloudFormation data-plane logging.

June 18, 2021

CloudFormation now supported for global tables

Amazon DynamoDB global tables now support AWS CloudFormation, which means you can create global tables and manage their settings with CloudFormation templates.

May 14, 2021

Amazon DynamoDB local support for Java 2.x

You now can use the AWS SDK for Java 2.x with DynamoDB local, the downloadable version of Amazon DynamoDB. With DynamoDB local, you can develop and test applications by using a version of DynamoDB running in your local development environment without incurring any additional costs.

May 3, 2021

NoSQL Workbench now supports AWS CloudFormation

NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB now supports AWS CloudFormation, so you can manage and modify DynamoDB data models with CloudFormation templates. In addition, you now can configure table capacity settings in NoSQL Workbench.

April 22, 2021

DynamoDB and AWS Amplify now feature integration

AWS Amplify now orchestrates multiple DynamoDB global secondary index updates in a single deployment.

April 20, 2021

AWS CloudTrail to log Amazon DynamoDB Streams data-plane APIs

You now can use AWS CloudTrail to log Amazon DynamoDB Streams data-plane API activity, and monitor and investigate item-level changes in your DynamoDB tables.

April 20, 2021

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for Amazon DynamoDB now supports AWS CloudFormation

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for Amazon DynamoDBnow supports AWS CloudFormation, which means you can enable streaming to an Amazon Kinesis data stream on your DynamoDB tables with CloudFormation templates. By streaming your DynamoDB data changes to a Kinesis data stream, you can build advanced streaming applications with AAmazon Kinesis services.

April 12, 2021

Amazon Keyspaces now offers FIPS 140-2 compliant endpoints

Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra) now offers Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 140-2 compliant endpoints to help you run highly regulated workloads more easily. FIPS 140-2 is a US and Canadian government standard that specifies the security requirements for cryptographic modules that protect sensitive information.

April 8, 2021

Amazon EC2 T3 instances for DAX

DAX now supports Amazon EC2 T3 instance types, which provide a baseline level of CPU performance with the ability to burst above the baseline when needed.

February 15, 2021

NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB support for PartiQL

You now can use the NoSQL Workbench for DynamoDB to build PartiQL statements for DynamoDB.

December 4, 2020

PartiQL for DynamoDB

You now can use PartiQL for DynamoDB—a SQL-compatible query language—to interact with DynamoDB tables and run ad hoc queries by using the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface, and DynamoDB APIs for PartiQL.

November 23, 2020

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for Amazon DynamoDB

You now can use Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for Amazon DynamoDB with your DynamoDB tables to capture item-level changes and replicate them to a Kinesis data stream.

November 23, 2020

DynamoDB table export

You can now export your DynamoDB tables to Amazon S3, enabling you to perform analytics and complex queries on your data with services like Athena, AWS Glue, and Lake Formation.

November 9, 2020

Support for empty values

DynamoDB now supports empty values for non-key String and Binary attributes in DynamoDB tables. Empty value support gives you greater flexibility to use attributes for a broader set of use cases without having to transform such attributes before sending them to DynamoDB. List, Map, and Set data types also support empty String and Binary values.

May 18, 2020

NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB support for Linux

NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB is now supported on Linux- Ubuntu , Fedora and Debian.

May 4, 2020

CloudWatch Contributor Insights for DynamoDB – GA

CloudWatch Contributor Insights for DynamoDB is generally available. CloudWatch Contributor Insights for DynamoDB is a diagnostic tool that provides an at-a-glance view of your DynamoDB table's traffic trends and helps you identify your table's most frequently accessed keys (also known as hot keys).

April 2, 2020

Upgrading global tables

You now can update your global tables from version 2017.11.29 to the latest version of global tables (2019.11.21), with a few clicks in the DynamoDB Console. By upgrading the version of your global tables, you can increase the availability of your DynamoDB tables easily by extending your existing tables into additional AWS Regions, with no table rebuilds required.

March 16, 2020

NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB – GA

NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB is generally available. Use the NoSQL Workbench to design, create, query, and manage DynamoDB tables.

March 2, 2020

DAX cache cluster metrics

DAX support for new CloudWatch metrics, that allow you to better understand your DAX cluster's performance.

February 6, 2020

CloudWatch Contributor Insights for DynamoDB – Preview

CloudWatch Contributor Insights for DynamoDB is a diagnostic tool that provides an at-a-glance view of your DynamoDB table's traffic trends and helps you identify your table's most frequently accessed keys (also known as hot keys).

November 26, 2019

Adaptive capacity support for imbalanced workload

Amazon DynamoDB adaptive capacity now handles imbalanced workloads better by isolating frequently accessed items automatically. If your application drives disproportionately high traffic to one or more items, DynamoDB will rebalance your partitions such that frequently accessed items do not reside on the same partition.

November 26, 2019

Support for customer managed keys

DynamoDB now supports customer managed keys, which means you can have full control over how you encrypt and manage the security of your DynamoDB data.

November 25, 2019

NoSQL Workbench support for DynamoDB local (Downloadable Version)

The NoSQL Workbench now supports connecting to DynamoDB local (Downloadable Version) to design, create, query, and manage DynamoDB tables.

November 8, 2019

NoSQL Workbench - Preview

This is the initial release of NoSQL Workbench for DynamoDB. Use NoSQL Workbench to design, create, query, and manage DynamoDB tables. For more information, see NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB (Preview).

September 16, 2019

DAX adds support for transactional operations using Python and .NET

DAX supports the TransactWriteItems and TransactGetItems APIs for applications written in Go, Java, .NET, Node.js, and Python. For more information, see In-Memory Acceleration with DAX.

February 14, 2019

Amazon DynamoDB local (Downloadable Version) Updates

DynamoDB local (Downloadable Version) now supports transactional APIs, on-demand read/write capacity, capacity reporting for read and write operations, and 20 global secondary indexes. For more information, see Differences Between Downloadable DynamoDB and the DynamoDB Web Service.

February 4, 2019

Amazon DynamoDB On-Demand

DynamoDB on-demand is a flexible billing option capable of serving thousands of requests per second without capacity planning. DynamoDB on-demand offers pay-per-request pricing for read and write requests so that you pay only for what you use. For more information, see Read/Write Capacity Mode.

November 28, 2018

Amazon DynamoDB Transactions

DynamoDB transactions make coordinated, all-or-nothing changes to multiple items both within and across tables, providing atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) in DynamoDB. For more information, see Amazon DynamoDB Transactions.

November 27, 2018

Amazon DynamoDB encrypts all customer data at rest

DynamoDB encryption at rest provides an additional layer of data protection by securing your data in the encrypted table, including its primary key, local and global secondary indexes, streams, global tables, backups, and DAX clusters whenever the data is stored in durable media. For more information, see Amazon DynamoDB Encryption at Rest.

November 15, 2018

Use Amazon DynamoDB Local More Easily with the New Docker Image

Now, it’s easier to use DynamoDB local, the downloadable version of DynamoDB, to help you develop and test your DynamoDB applications by using the new DynamoDB local Docker image. For more information, see DynamoDB (Downloadable Version) and Docker.

August 22, 2018

DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) Adds Support for Encryption at Rest

DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) now supports encryption at rest for new DAX clusters to help you accelerate reads from Amazon DynamoDB tables in security-sensitive applications that are subject to strict compliance and regulatory requirements. For more information, see DAX Encryption at Rest.

August 9, 2018

DynamoDB point-in-time recovery (PITR) adds support for restoring deleted tables

If you delete a table with point-in-time recovery enabled, a system backup is automatically created and is retained for 35 days (at no additional cost). For more information, see Before You Begin Using Point In Time Recovery.

August 7, 2018

Updates now available over RSS

You can now subscribe to the RSS feed (at the top left corner of this page) to receive notifications about updates to the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide.

July 3, 2018

Earlier updates

The following table describes important changes of the DynamoDB Developer Guide before July 3, 2018.

Change Description Date Changed
Go support for DAX

Now, you can enable microsecond read performance for Amazon DynamoDB tables in your applications written in the Go programming language by using the new DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) SDK for Go. For more information, see DAX SDK for Go.

June 26, 2018
DynamoDB announces SLA

DynamoDB has released a public availability SLA. For more information, see Amazon DynamoDB Service Level Agreement.

June 19, 2018
DynamoDB continuous backups and Point-In-Time Recovery (PITR)

Point-in-time recovery helps protect your Amazon DynamoDB tables from accidental write or delete operations. With point in time recovery, you don't have to worry about creating, maintaining, or scheduling on-demand backups. For example, suppose that a test script writes accidentally to a production DynamoDB table. With point-in-time recovery, you can restore that table to any point in time during the last 35 days. DynamoDB maintains incremental backups of your table. For more information, see Point-in-time recovery for DynamoDB.

April 25, 2018
Encryption at rest for DynamoDB

DynamoDB encryption at rest, available for new DynamoDB tables, helps you secure your application data in Amazon DynamoDB tables by using AWS-managed encryption keys stored in AWS Key Management Service. For more information, see DynamoDB encryption at rest.

February 8, 2018
DynamoDB Backup and restore

On-Demand Backup allows you to create full backups of your DynamoDB tables data for data archival, helping you meet your corporate and governmental regulatory requirements. You can backup tables from a few megabytes to hundreds of terabytes of data, with no impact on performance and availability to your production applications. For more information, see Using On-Demand backup and restore for DynamoDB.

November 29, 2017
DynamoDB Global tables

Global Tables builds upon DynamoDB’s global footprint to provide you with a fully managed, multi-region, and multi-active database that provides fast, local, read and write performance for massively scaled, global applications. Global Tables replicates your Amazon DynamoDB tables automatically across your choice of AWS regions. For more information, see Global tables - multi-Region replication for DynamoDB.

November 29, 2017
Node.js support for DAX

Node.js developers can leverage DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX), using the DAX client for Node.js. For more information, see In-memory acceleration with DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX).

October 5, 2017
VPC Endpoints for DynamoDB

DynamoDB endpoints allow Amazon EC2 instances in your Amazon VPC to access DynamoDB, without exposure to the public Internet. Network traffic between your VPC and DynamoDB does not leave the Amazon network. For more information, see Using Amazon VPC endpoints to access DynamoDB.

August 16, 2017
Auto Scaling for DynamoDB

DynamoDB auto scaling eliminates the need for manually defining or adjust provisioned throughput settings. Instead, DynamoDB auto scaling dynamically adjusts read and write capacity in response to actual traffic patterns. This allows a table or a global secondary index to increase its provisioned read and write capacity to handle sudden increases in traffic, without throttling. When the workload decreases, DynamoDB auto scaling decreases the provisioned capacity. For more information, see Managing throughput capacity automatically with DynamoDB auto scaling.

June 14, 2017
DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)

DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) is a fully managed, highly available, in-memory cache for DynamoDB that delivers up to a 10x performance improvement – from milliseconds to microseconds – even at millions of requests per second. For more information, see In-memory acceleration with DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX).

April 19, 2017
DynamoDB now supports automatic item expiration with Time to Live (TTL)

Amazon DynamoDB Time to Live (TTL) enables you to automatically delete expired items from your tables, at no additional cost. For more information, see Time to Live (TTL).

Feb 27, 2017
DynamoDB now supports Cost Allocation Tags

You can now add tags to your Amazon DynamoDB tables for improved usage categorization and more granular cost reporting. For more information, see Adding tags and labels to resources.

Jan 19, 2017
New DynamoDB DescribeLimits API

The DescribeLimits API returns the current provisioned capacity limits for your AWS account in a region, both for the region as a whole and for any one DynamoDB table that you create there. It lets you determine what your current account-level limits are so that you can compare them to the provisioned capacity that you are currently using, and have plenty of time to apply for an increase before you hit a limit. For more information, see Service, account, and table quotas in Amazon DynamoDB and the DescribeLimits in the Amazon DynamoDB API Reference.

March 1, 2016
DynamoDB Console Update and New Terminology for Primary Key Attributes

The DynamoDB management console has been redesigned to be more intuitive and easy to use. As part of this update, we are introducing new terminology for primary key attributes:

  • Partition Key—also known as a hash attribute.

  • Sort Key—also known as a range attribute.

Only the names have changed; the functionality remains the same.

When you create a table or a secondary index, you can choose either a simple primary key (partition key only), or a composite primary key (partition key and sort key). The DynamoDB documentation has been updated to reflect these changes.

November 12, 2015
Amazon DynamoDB Storage Backend for Titan

The DynamoDB Storage Backend for Titan is a storage backend for the Titan graph database implemented on top of Amazon DynamoDB. When using the DynamoDB Storage Backend for Titan, your data benefits from the protection of DynamoDB, which runs across Amazon’s high-availability data centers. The plugin is available for Titan version 0.4.4 (primarily for compatibility with existing applications) and Titan version 0.5.4 (recommended for new applications). Like other storage backends for Titan, this plugin supports the Tinkerpop stack (versions 2.4 and 2.5), including the Blueprints API and the Gremlin shell. For more information, see Amazon DynamoDB Storage Backend for Titan.

August 20, 2015
DynamoDB Streams, Cross-Region Replication, and Scan with Strongly Consistent Reads 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. For more information, see Change data capture for DynamoDB Streams and the DynamoDB Streams API Reference.

DynamoDB cross-region replication is a client-side solution for maintaining identical copies of DynamoDB tables across different AWS regions, in near real time. You can use cross region replication to back up DynamoDB tables, or to provide low-latency access to data where users are geographically distributed.

The DynamoDB Scan operation uses eventually consistent reads, by default. You can use strongly consistent reads instead by setting the ConsistentRead parameter to true. For more information, see Read consistency for scan and Scan in the Amazon DynamoDB API Reference.

July 16, 2015
AWS CloudTrail support for Amazon DynamoDB DynamoDB is now integrated with CloudTrail. CloudTrail captures API calls made from the DynamoDB console or from the DynamoDB API and tracks them in log files. For more information, see Logging DynamoDB operations by using AWS CloudTrail and the AWS CloudTrail User Guide. May 28, 2015
Improved support for Query expressions This release adds a new KeyConditionExpression parameter to the Query API. A Query reads items from a table or an index using primary key values. The KeyConditionExpression parameter is a string that identifies primary key names, and conditions to be applied to the key values; the Query retrieves only those items that satisfy the expression. The syntax of KeyConditionExpression is similar to that of other expression parameters in DynamoDB, and allows you to define substitution variables for names and values within the expression. For more information, see Query operations in DynamoDB. April 27, 2015
New comparison functions for conditional writes In DynamoDB, the ConditionExpression parameter determines whether a PutItem, UpdateItem, or DeleteItem succeeds: The item is written only if the condition evaluates to true. This release adds two new functions, attribute_type and size, for use withConditionExpression. These functions allow you to perform a conditional writes based on the data type or size of an attribute in a table. For more information, see Condition expressions. April 27, 2015
Scan API for secondary indexes In DynamoDB, a Scan operation reads all of the items in a table, applies user-defined filtering criteria, and returns the selected data items to the application. This same capability is now available for secondary indexes too. To scan a local secondary index or a global secondary index, you specify the index name and the name of its parent table. By default, an index Scan returns all of the data in the index; you can use a filter expression to narrow the results that are returned to the application. For more information, see Working with scans in DynamoDB. February 10, 2015
Online operations for global secondary indexes Online indexing lets you add or remove global secondary indexes on existing tables. With online indexing, you do not need to define all of a table's indexes when you create a table; instead, you can add a new index at any time. Similarly, if you decide you no longer need an index, you can remove it at any time. Online indexing operations are non-blocking, so that the table remains available for read and write activity while indexes are being added or removed. For more information, see Managing Global Secondary Indexes. January 27, 2015
Document model support with JSON DynamoDB allows you to store and retrieve documents with full support for document models. New data types are fully compatible with the JSON standard and allow you to nest document elements within one another. You can use document path dereference operators to read and write individual elements, without having to retrieve the entire document. This release also introduces new expression parameters for specifying projections, conditions and update actions when reading or writing data items. To learn more about document model support with JSON, see Data types and Using expressions in DynamoDB. October 7, 2014
Flexible scaling For tables and global secondary indexes, you can increase provisioned read and write throughput capacity by any amount, provided that you stay within your per-table and per-account limits. For more information, see Service, account, and table quotas in Amazon DynamoDB. October 7, 2014
Larger item sizes The maximum item size in DynamoDB has increased from 64 KB to 400 KB. For more information, see Service, account, and table quotas in Amazon DynamoDB. October 7, 2014
Improved conditional expressions DynamoDB expands the operators that are available for conditional expressions, giving you additional flexibility for conditional puts, updates, and deletes. The newly available operators let you check whether an attribute does or does not exist, is greater than or less than a particular value, is between two values, begins with certain characters, and much more. DynamoDB also provides an optional OR operator for evaluating multiple conditions. By default, multiple conditions in an expression are ANDed together, so the expression is true only if all of its conditions are true. If you specify OR instead, the expression is true if one or more one conditions are true. For more information, see Working with items and attributes. April 24, 2014
Query filter The DynamoDB Query API supports a new QueryFilter option. By default, a Query finds items that match a specific partition key value and an optional sort key condition. A Query filter applies conditional expressions to other, non-key attributes; if a Query filter is present, then items that do not match the filter conditions are discarded before the Query results are returned to the application. For more information, see Query operations in DynamoDB. April 24, 2014
Data export and import using the AWS Management Console The DynamoDB console has been enhanced to simplify exports and imports of data in DynamoDB tables. With just a few clicks, you can set up an AWS Data Pipeline to orchestrate the workflow, and an Amazon Elastic MapReduce cluster to copy data from DynamoDB tables to an Amazon S3 bucket, or vice-versa. You can perform an export or import one time only, or set up a daily export job. You can even perform cross-region exports and imports, copying DynamoDB data from a table in one AWS region to a table in another AWS region. For more information, see Exporting and importing DynamoDB data using AWS Data Pipeline. March 6, 2014
Reorganized higher-level API documentation Information about the following APIs is now easier to find:
  • Java: DynamoDBMappper

  • .NET: Document model and object-persistence model

These higher-level APIs are now documented here: Higher-level programming interfaces for DynamoDB.
January 20, 2014
Global secondary indexes DynamoDB adds support for global secondary indexes. As with a local secondary index, you define a global secondary index by using an alternate key from a table and then issuing Query requests on the index. Unlike a local secondary index, the partition key for the global secondary index does not have to be the same as that of the table; it can be any scalar attribute from the table. The sort key is optional and can also be any scalar table attribute. A global secondary index also has its own provisioned throughput settings, which are separate from those of the parent table. For more information, see Improving data access with secondary indexes and Using Global Secondary Indexes in DynamoDB. December 12, 2013
Fine-grained access control DynamoDB adds support for fine-grained access control. This feature allows customers to specify which principals (users, groups, or roles) can access individual items and attributes in a DynamoDB table or secondary index. Applications can also leverage web identity federation to offload the task of user authentication to a third-party identity provider, such as Facebook, Google, or Login with Amazon. In this way, applications (including mobile apps) can handle very large numbers of users, while ensuring that no one can access DynamoDB data items unless they are authorized to do so. For more information, see Using IAM policy conditions for fine-grained access control. October 29, 2013
4 KB read capacity unit size The capacity unit size for reads has increased from 1 KB to 4 KB. This enhancement can reduce the number of provisioned read capacity units required for many applications. For example, prior to this release, reading a 10 KB item would consume 10 read capacity units; now that same 10 KB read would consume only 3 units (10 KB / 4 KB, rounded up to the next 4 KB boundary). For more information, see Read/write capacity mode. May 14, 2013
Parallel scans DynamoDB adds support for parallel Scan operations. Applications can now divide a table into logical segments and scan all of the segments simultaneously. This feature reduces the time required for a Scan to complete, and fully utilizes a table's provisioned read capacity. For more information, see Working with scans in DynamoDB. May 14, 2013
Local secondary indexes DynamoDB adds support for local secondary indexes. You can define sort key indexes on non-key attributes, and then use these indexes in Query requests. With local secondary indexes, applications can efficiently retrieve data items across multiple dimensions. For more information, see Local Secondary Indexes. April 18, 2013
New API version With this release, DynamoDB introduces a new API version (2012-08-10). The previous API version (2011-12-05) is still supported for backward compatibility with existing applications. New applications should use the new API version 2012-08-10. We recommend that you migrate your existing applications to API version 2012-08-10, since new DynamoDB features (such as local secondary indexes) will not be backported to the previous API version. For more information on API version 2012-08-10, see the Amazon DynamoDB API Reference. April 18, 2013
IAM policy variable support

The IAM access policy language now supports variables. When a policy is evaluated, any policy variables are replaced with values that are supplied by context-based information from the authenticated user's session. You can use policy variables to define general purpose policies without explicitly listing all the components of the policy. For more information about policy variables, go to Policy Variables in the AWS Identity and Access Management Using IAM guide.

For examples of policy variables in DynamoDB, see Identity and Access Management for Amazon DynamoDB.

April 4, 2013
PHP code examples updated for AWS SDK for PHP version 2 Version 2 of the AWS SDK for PHP is now available. The PHP code examples in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide have been updated to use this new SDK. For more information on Version 2 of the SDK, see AWS SDK for PHP. January 23, 2013
New endpoint DynamoDB expands to the AWS GovCloud (US-West) region. For the current list of service endpoints and protocols, see Regions and Endpoints. December 3, 2012
New endpoint DynamoDB expands to the South America (São Paulo) region. For the current list of supported endpoints, see Regions and Endpoints. December 3, 2012
New endpoint DynamoDB expands to the Asia Pacific (Sydney) region. For the current list of supported endpoints, see Regions and Endpoints. November 13, 2012

DynamoDB implements support for CRC32 checksums, supports strongly consistent batch gets, and removes restrictions on concurrent table updates.

  • DynamoDB calculates a CRC32 checksum of the HTTP payload and returns this checksum in a new header, x-amz-crc32. For more information, see DynamoDB low-level API.

  • By default, read operations performed by the BatchGetItem API are eventually consistent. A new ConsistentRead parameter in BatchGetItem lets you choose strong read consistency instead, for any table(s) in the request. For more information, see Description.

  • This release removes some restrictions when updating many tables simultaneously. The total number of tables that can be updated at once is still 10; however, these tables can now be any combination of CREATING, UPDATING or DELETING status. Additionally, there is no longer any minimum amount for increasing or reducing the ReadCapacityUnits or WriteCapacityUnits for a table. For more information, see Service, account, and table quotas in Amazon DynamoDB.

November 2, 2012

Best practices documentation

The Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide identifies best practices for working with tables and items, along with recommendations for query and scan operations.

September 28, 2012

Support for binary data type

In addition to the Number and String types, DynamoDB now supports Binary data type.

Prior to this release, to store binary data, you converted your binary data into string format and stored it in DynamoDB. In addition to the required conversion work on the client-side, the conversion often increased the size of the data item requiring more storage and potentially additional provisioned throughput capacity.

With the binary type attributes you can now store any binary data, for example compressed data, encrypted data, and images. For more information see Data types. For working examples of handling binary type data using the AWS SDKs, see the following sections:

For the added binary data type support in the AWS SDKs, you will need to download the latest SDKs and you might also need to update any existing applications. For information about downloading the AWS SDKs, see .NET code examples.

August 21, 2012

DynamoDB table items can be updated and copied using the DynamoDB console

DynamoDB users can now update and copy table items using the DynamoDB Console, in addition to being able to add and delete items. This new functionality simplifies making changes to individual items through the Console.

August 14, 2012

DynamoDB lowers minimum table throughput requirements

DynamoDB now supports lower minimum table throughput requirements, specifically 1 write capacity unit and 1 read capacity unit. For more information, see the Service, account, and table quotas in Amazon DynamoDB topic in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide.

August 9, 2012

Signature Version 4 support

DynamoDB now supports Signature Version 4 for authenticating requests.

July 5, 2012

Table explorer support in DynamoDB Console

The DynamoDB Console now supports a table explorer that enables you to browse and query the data in your tables. You can also insert new items or delete existing items. The Creating tables and loading data for code examples in DynamoDB and Using the console sections have been updated for these features.

May 22, 2012

New endpoints

DynamoDB availability expands with new endpoints in the US West (N. California) region, US West (Oregon) region, and the Asia Pacific (Singapore) region.

For the current list of supported endpoints, go to Regions and Endpoints.

April 24, 2012

BatchWriteItem API support

DynamoDB now supports a batch write API that enables you to put and delete several items from one or more tables in a single API call. For more information about the DynamoDB batch write API, see BatchWriteItem.

For information about working with items and using batch write feature using AWS SDKs, see Working with items and attributes and .NET code examples.

April 19, 2012

Documented more error codes

For more information, see Error handling with DynamoDB.

April 5, 2012

New endpoint

DynamoDB expands to the Asia Pacific (Tokyo) region. For the current list of supported endpoints, see Regions and Endpoints.

February 29, 2012

ReturnedItemCount metric added

A new metric, ReturnedItemCount, provides the number of items returned in the response of a Query or Scan operation for DynamoDB is available for monitoring through CloudWatch. For more information, see Logging and monitoring in DynamoDB.

February 24, 2012

Added examples for incrementing values

DynamoDB supports incrementing and decrementing existing numeric values. Examples show adding to existing values in the "Updating an Item" sections at:

Working with items: Java.

Working with items: .NET.

January 25, 2012

Initial product release

DynamoDB is introduced as a new service in Beta release.

January 18, 2012