Difference between AmazonDynamoDBClient and DynamoDB classes in their java SDK?

Question

I am using Amazon's DynamoDB java SDK and want to know the difference between the AmazonDynamoDBClient and DynamoDB classes. I can't seem to find anything on them since there appears to be very little documentation. Is there any reason I should use one or the other? Are their any major benefits or drawbacks?

Answer 1

This is a good question. It looks like DynamoDB is a wrapper to the AmazonDynamoDBClient, providing a different interface. So this may be obvious and not the answer you are looking for but let me describe some of the differences between them.

The createTable method in AmazonDynamoDBClient returns back a CreateTableResult object, whereas the DynamoDB's createTable method returns back a Table object. This Table object can then be used to do CRUD on that table. The Table object starts looking like a generic ORM object for DynamoDB. So its not really DynamoDB class vs AmazonDynamoDBClient, its more like DynamoDB & Table classes vs AmazonDynamoDBClient.

AmazonDynamoDBClient is obviously older than the DynamoDB class. DynamoDB is pretty new, coming out in 1.9.x. But there is another class here worth mentioning, DynamoDBMapper. DynamoDBMapper allows for even more ORM like operations. Allowing developers to annotate their JavaBean data-model's so that they can easily be CRUD'd against a DynamoDB table. You get to work with your objects directly and the DynamoDBMapper will do the CRUD work on the DynamoDB database. DynamoDBMapper is older than the DynamoDB class. I think maybe some developers did not want to work with the DynamoDBMapper (maybe not a fan of OO or annotations?) and there needed to be another paradigm, but I'm only hypothesizing. So the DynamoDB and Table classes were created. With the Table class you can interact with your tables more easily than the AmazonDynamoDBClient but without the overhead of creating JavaBean data-models that the DynamoDBMapper require.