DynamoDB Dynomite Indexes What They Are
Important: These docs are for the outdated Jets 5 versions and below. For the latest Jets docs: docs.rubyonjets.com
Thinking about how NoSQL database work in general and how DynamoDB charges money for creating certain types of indexes (GSIs), gives us a clue on how DynamoDB indexes work under the hood.
When you create a GSI index, it takes a while and can double the cost of storage. GSIs are essentially copies of the table. More details Using Global Secondary Indexes in DynamoDB. It can make a lot of sense once we think about GSIs as copies of the table.
At its heart, DynamoDB is a key-value storage database. It’s designed for fast write and read operations. It’s almost like Memcached with additional querying features. DynamoDB items can even have a TTL and act like a cache.