Alan Williamson's Blog

I have recently updated the beautiful class that Ian Schumacher originally developed to access Amazon's SimpleDB without using any external dependencies.

Back in July I made some enhancements to this class by adding a very simple in-class XML parser that would pull back the results in a format that the calling class could actually use.

I have added a couple of new methods to catch the new methods added by Amazon to SimpleDB. Namely the QueryWithAttributes directive that lets you pull back all the attributes for a given Item that matches the query results. This makes querying SimpleDB even more efficient as you can get all your data in one call.

As usual, you can get at this data as a List of HashMap's.

SimpleDB sDb = new SimpleDB( amzID, amzKey );
List results = sDb.queryWithAttributesAsListMap
( amzDomain, qry, null );

I also added in a new method to delete a whole record from SimpleDB given a domain and an Item.

SimpleDB sDb = new SimpleDB( amzID, amzKey );
sDb.deleteItem( amzDomain, item);

Now if anything goes wrong, with any of the calls, an Exception is thrown. Remember, if you delete something and straight afterwards do a query, you may still see it, that's because of Amazon's caching and updating mechanisms.

Thanks again to Ian Schumacher for developing the original class and making it available on Amazon under a very liberal license (Absolutely free in all senses of the word, absolutely no restrictions, no attribution necessary).

In the same spirit, I include the updated version of that code here, to be used in the same spirit as the original author. Just "Copy and Paste" It!

Continued...

Cloud Computing Bootcamp
Being held for the first time at The Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, CA, on November 19, 2008, the Cloud Computing Bootcamp will show you how to take advantage of the cloud.

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Cloud computing is an opportunity for businesses to implement low-cost, low-power and high-efficiency systems to deliver scalable infrastructure. But moving to a cloud infrastructure is not necessarily as nice and clean as the providers would want you to think. With cloud infrastructures problems don't magically go away; they just shift: you don't have scalability or storage problems any more, but you need to constantly monitor the cloud and your application in it.

Led by Alan Williamson, the Cloud Computing Bootcamp will illustrate all the major players and provide a hands-on program with configuration samples, live demos and working setups you can further adapt and play with.

Alan Williamson, founder of Blog-City.com, is a Sun Java Champion and creator of OpenBlueDragon (an open source Java CFML runtime engine). He is currently engaged with a number of startups providing technology and expertise. He has worked with SpikeSource for nearly three years as technical evangelist and architect in SpikeLabs. He has assisted VCs in preparing technical overview and due diligence, was editor-in-chief of Java Developer's Journal, founding editor of LinuxWorld Magazine, and has more than 16 years of experience in the world of software development.

Join Alan Williamson and your fellow attendees at the Cloud Computing Bootcamp on November 19, 2008, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. We'll see you in San Jose, California!

Cloud Computing Bootcamp is timed to coincide with SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Expo (19-21 November, 2008), also being held at The Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, CA.