Programming Amazon Web Services

Preface

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the name of a suite of web services made available by Amazon that allow third-party developers to access and build on the company’s technology platform. This suite includes a number of infrastructure services that can augment or replace the traditional physical infrastructure required by web applications. These infrastructure services provide storage, computing power, a messaging system, a payment system, and a database that can be accessed by anyone with an Amazon.com account and a credit card. Best of all, with these services you pay only for what you use. Whether you are merely experimenting with the services or using them as a platform for web applications serving thousands of users, you rent only the infrastructure you need and only when you need it.

These services offer a compelling alternative to building your applications on top of standard, physical hardware, because they can provide the scalable, reliable, and cost-effective infrastructure components you need without the expense or effort involved in managing your own hardware. They give you the freedom to concentrate on your application instead of the physical platform it runs on. They also significantly reduce the initial investment required to build and offer a service, while giving you confidence that your application will be able to not only survive any sudden attention it receives, but to grow and thrive in response. By leaving the infrastructure management to Amazon, you can focus ...