Programming Amazon Web Services

Thinking Like Amazon

Before you start building applications based on AWS, it is worthwhile to consider the thinking behind these services. What were the key goals that lead Amazon to build the services in the first place? And how did these goals influence the design and implementation of the services?

Initially, the AWS infrastructure services were not conceived as products to be sold to developers external to Amazon but were instead designed to meet specific needs within Amazon’s own internal systems. It was only later that these services were opened up to the public. The key implementation details of the services are therefore intended primarily to serve Amazon’s needs and will not necessarily use the methodologies or techniques common in the rest of the industry. Appreciating the reasoning behind the architectural decisions and their implementation details can help you to adjust your expectations for the services. This, in turn, will make it easier to design applications that work well with the services’ capabilities.

Amazon’s services are designed to power the Amazon.com web site and related partner applications. The services operate as small component cogs in a large service-oriented architecture (SOA). Each service performs a specific task as simply and efficiently as possible, while the strengths of many different services are combined as required to perform complex processes and build the rich Amazon.com web pages with which we are familiar. Amazon’s SOA has been developed ...