We are starting a project in CloudBerry lab that will employ Amazon SimpleDB and we have been looking for a tool to help us get started with it. I came across this wonderful SimpleDB manager from Bolso. It is an Adobe Air application and works on Windows as well as on Mac. It costs only $20 and 7 days evaluation copy is available. I hope the rest of the post will help other SimpleDB developers learn Bolso features and decide if they can benefit from it.
Getting started
On the first run you should enter password for protect your Amazon account data. Then you should specify Amazon account data for start using Bolso.
Main Window
Main application window contains list of domains in the left part (it can be hidden with a button) and domain content in the right.
In the right bottom corner notification or error messages are displayed:
Displaying domain items
Domain items can be displayed in standard (list) style, or in tree view style with grouping by some field:
Query builder
Bolso has integrated sql query builder, that allows to create a query for specific attributes and items.
Manually writing a query
More advanced users may write and save sql queries without assistance of query builder:
Importing data
Another useful feature (or may be the main) of Bolso is data import:
Currently only xml file exported by phpMyAdmin may be used for import:
You should check generate item names box or select one of unique fields of source table to be used as item names. Then select columns, destination bucket and validate import file. After that ‘Import to SimpleDB‘ button become available
Another neat thing is a domain properties window, that shows the domain size and item count and other metadata
Conclusion: easy to use tool that allows exploring and modifying SimpleDB database. Data import features are particularly useful. One thing I would suggest the author is to make it possible to configure proxy settings to allow users behind the corporate firewall to work with SimpleDB. I highly recommend it to anybody who develops on SimpleDB or just want to try it out. You can download it at http://www.cafesilencio.net/bolso
At this time Cloud Databases such as Amazon SimpleDB are not nearly as popular as Cloud Storages such as Amazon S3, but I am sure that they will take off the ground one day as they provide for an efficient pay per use model and unlimited scalability as well as flexibility when it comes to querying the data not found in Cloud Storage services.
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1 comments:
You know, as with EC2 and S3, Amazon charges fees for SimpleDB storage, transfer, and throughput over the Internet
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