Amazon SimpleDB a complete flop? Terry asks if anyone is actually using SimpleDB (related Google searches indicate not, and I’ve personally not heard of anyone using it despite plenty of usage of S3 and EC2). One factor might be that lock-in to EC2 and S3 is pretty small, but if you rely on SimpleDB you’ll need to rewrite your entire application to escape.
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Yeah, the lock in factor is a huge problem to me. It's basically like the Google App Engine.
The technology may well be the best in the world, but you're a total share-cropper. Might as well build iPhone apps or something :)
Hi Simon
I'd not considered the impact of lock-in, but I'm sure you're right that it's probably a factor.
The strange thing to me is that whatever the reasons are, there's apparently nothing at all on the web when you do those obvious searches. SimpleDB "lock in" does get 1400 hits.
We're planning to open source our stuff, though I'm not sure exactly when.
Tim O made the same point btw, said you have to open source for adoption. Simon Wardley would no doubt agree.
We use SimpleDB at my company (for PackRat, a Facebook game). Most of our data is stored in MySQL, but one particular table got too big to manage easily, so I ported it to SimpleDB. So far, it has worked great -- but I admit, I'm still a bit nervous about the lock-in aspect.
Dont know if this might help someone. Its a simple script to export the data from simpledb into a csv file. Think I heard rumors of them creating a way to dynamically building the sql structure on export.
http://builtbydave.co.uk/2008/08/26/amazon-simpled b-export/
Anonamous - 4th December 2008 01:54 - #
I would if I could find a nifty open source app to take advantage of the offering in a manner that was useful- or that amused me
Seth - 30th December 2008 20:07 - #