Programming Amazon Web Services

S3, EC2, SQS, FPS, and SimpleDB

By James Murty
March 2008
Pages: 600
ISBN 10: 0-596-51581-2 | ISBN 13: 9780596515812
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 Description

With this book, you'll learn how companies can take advantage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) to "rent" computing power, data storage and bandwidth on Amazon's vast network infrastructure. Programming Amazon Web Services gives developers the background and technical detail they need for using Amazon's subscription-based Simple Storage Service (S3), Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Simple Queue Service (SQS), Flexible Payments Service (FPS), and SimpleDB to build web-scale business applications.


Full Description

Building on the success of its storefront and fulfillment services, Amazon now allows businesses to "rent" computing power, data storage and bandwidth on its vast network platform. This book demonstrates how developers working with small- to mid-sized companies can take advantage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) such as the Simple Storage Service (S3), Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Simple Queue Service (SQS), Flexible Payments Service (FPS), and SimpleDB to build web-scale business applications.

With AWS, Amazon offers a new paradigm for IT infrastructure: use what you need, as you need it, and pay as you go. Programming Amazon Web Services explains how you can access Amazon's open APIs to store and run applications, rather than spend precious time and resources building your own. With this book, you'll learn all the technical details you need to:
  • Store and retrieve any amount of data using application servers, unlimited data storage, and bandwidth with the Amazon S3 service
  • Buy computing time using Amazon EC2's interface to requisition machines, load them with an application environment, manage access permissions, and run your image using as many or few systems as needed
  • Use Amazon's web-scale messaging infrastructure to store messages as they travel between computers with Amazon SQS
  • Leverage the Amazon FPS service to structure payment instructions and allow the movement of money between any two entities, humans or computers
  • Create and store multiple data sets, query your data easily, and return the results using Amazon SimpleDB.
  • Scale up or down at a moment's notice, using these services to employ as much time and space as you need
Whether you're starting a new online business, need to ramp up existing services, or require an offsite backup for your home, Programming Amazon Web Services gives you the background and the practical knowledge you need to start using AWS. Other books explain how to build web services. This book teaches businesses how to take make use of existing services from an established technology leader.


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Informative Book, but Currently Outdated,  January 28 2009
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Submitted by Programmer 1   [Respond | View]

I found this book to be informative and useful in developing my understanding of AWS. I really liked the organization of the material and the order in which the topics were laid out. The code examples were provided in Ruby, which was an extremely great decision on behalf of O'Reilly.

My biggest complain about this book (and one which couldn't have been avoided at the time they wrote this book) is that it is currently outdated. Granted, everything the author wrote at the time the book was published was true about AWS. But several of his complaints have since been handled quite well by Amazon, and they are no longer problems.

If you want to gain a broad understanding of AWS, I recommend buying this book. Just keep in mind that if the author says "Something like YYY can't be done with AWS" --chances are, it probably can now.

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Media reviews
"Amazon has done a great job with AWS and, as expected, O'Reilly is here to follow-up with a quality technical publication that moves the reader forward into working with and developing for this cloud computing platform."
-- Frank J. Harris, Help Net Security



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