Amazon SimpleDB thoughts

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[Amazon](http://amazon.com/) recently announced their latest web service,
[SimpleDB](http://aws.amazon.com/simpledb), to a roar of
[buzz](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/14/amazon-takes-on-oracle-and-ibm-with-simple-db-beta/)
[and](http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/07/12/16/0012213.shtml)
[hype](http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/12/15/amazonRemovesTheDatabaseSc.html).
I finally got a chance to sit down and read through the docs and blog posts,
and
[like with the Facebook Data Store API](/space/facebook+data+store+api+thoughts),
I've
[written up my thoughts](/space/amazon+simpledb+thoughts).

The executive summary is: I like it. It's solid, straightforward, and
eminently useful. Sure, it's limited. It includes design decisions that
clearly simplified the implementation at the cost of functionality and
usability. Still, as a result of those decisions, SimpleDB has
the potential to be very robust, scalable, and performant.

With SimpleDB alongside [S3](http://aws.amazon.com/s3) and
[EC2](http://aws.amazon.com/ec2), Amazon's web services look more and more
like the [Unix philosophy](http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/): small,
simple tools that do one job, do it well, and fit together in ways that
complement each other. Very, very cool.

Then again, I'm a sucker for anything
[based on tuplespaces...](/space/amazon+simpledb+thoughts#tuplespaces)

[Read more...](/space/amazon+simpledb+thoughts)