The Single Table Design with DynamoDB: How to design a hyper-scalable database
AWS’s DynamoDB is a noSQL database that can potentially scale infinitely. But in order for it to reach its maximum scaling potential, you need to understand how it works and how to properly design your tables and data. Table design, such as the single table design, good selection of your primary and sort keys and understanding your data access patterns are all paramount to successfully implementing an infinitely scalable database.
I have written articles recently on primary key selection and understanding your data access patterns before designing your database. In this article I’ll focus solely on the single table design; what it can help you achieve, and concrete examples on exactly how to design your single table for infinite scalability.
Without further ado, let’s dive right into it!
What is the single table design?
The single table design is actually the DynamoDB recommended way of designing your database. In essence, instead of having one table per entity, as we do in a relational database, the single table approach uses a single table for all our entities in our database.
The advantages of using the single table design are numerous. We create only one table that we need to manage…
