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Amazon SimpleDB Coming Soon

I'm a big fan on Amazon's Developer Services, and use them at home and at work. One of things missing has been a database-type service for developers to access - S3 only does files (well, easily.)

I got an email today from Amazon telling me their database service is coming soon.

Dear AWS Developers, This is a short note to let a subset of our most active developers know about an upcoming limited beta of our newest web service: Amazon SimpleDB, which is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud.

Traditionally, this type of functionality has been accomplished with a clustered relational database that requires a sizable upfront investment, brings more complexity than is typically needed, and often requires a DBA to maintain and administer. In contrast, Amazon SimpleDB is easy to use and provides the core functionality of a database - real-time lookup and simple querying of structured data - without the operational complexity.

Were excited about this upcoming service and wanted to let you know about it as soon as possible. We anticipate beginning the limited beta in the next few weeks. In the meantime, you can read more about the service, and sign up to be notified when the limited beta program opens and a spot becomes available for you. To do so, simply click the "Sign Up For This Web Service" button on the web site below and we will record your contact information.

I can't wait to try it. I'm interested to see what the pricing structure will be.