Getting started with the Amazon QLDB driver - Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (Amazon QLDB)

Getting started with the Amazon QLDB driver

This chapter contains hands-on tutorials to help you learn about developing with Amazon QLDB by using the QLDB driver. The driver is built on top of the AWS SDK, which supports interaction with the QLDB API.

QLDB session abstraction

The driver provides a high-level abstraction layer above the transactional data API (QLDB Session). It streamlines the process of running PartiQL statements on ledger data by managing SendCommand API calls. These API calls require several parameters that the driver handles for you, including the management of sessions, transactions, and retry policy in the case of errors. The driver also has performance optimizations and applies best practices for interacting with QLDB.

Note

To interact with the resource management API operations that are listed in the Amazon QLDB API reference, you use the AWS SDK directly instead of the driver. You use the management API only for managing ledger resources and for non-transactional data operations, such as exporting, streaming, and data verification.

Amazon Ion support

In addition, the driver uses Amazon Ion libraries to provide support for handling Ion data when running transactions. These libraries also take care of calculating the hash of Ion values. QLDB requires these Ion hashes to check the integrity of data transaction requests.

Driver terminology

This tool is called a driver because it's comparable to other database drivers that provide developer-friendly interfaces. These drivers similarly encapsulate logic that converts a standard set of commands and functions into specific calls that are required by the service's low-level API.

The driver is open source on GitHub and is available for the following programming languages:

For general driver information for all supported programming languages, and additional tutorials, see the following topics: