Porting Data from DynamoDB to Redshift: Important Considerations

Key Considerations for Porting Data from DynamoDB to Redshift

Question

A company has been using DynamoDB tables for 6 months and it contains millions of rows of data.

They now need to port the data onto a Redshift table for conducting analysis on historical data.

Which of the following needs to be kept in mind when porting data from DynamoDB to Redshift.

Choose 2 answers from the options given below.

Answers

Explanations

Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer

A. B. C. D.

Answer - B and C.

The AWS Documentation mentions the following.

Before you can load data from a DynamoDB table, you must first create an Amazon Redshift table to serve as the destination for the data.

Keep in mind that you are copying data from a NoSQL environment into a SQL environment, and that there are certain rules in one environment that do not apply in the other.

Here are some of the differences to consider:

DynamoDB table names can contain up to 255 characters, including '.' (dot) and '-' (dash) characters, and are case-sensitive.

Amazon Redshift table names are limited to 127 characters, cannot contain dots or dashes and are not case-sensitive.

In addition, table names cannot conflict with any Amazon Redshift reserved words.

DynamoDB does not support the SQL concept of NULL.

You need to specify how Amazon Redshift interprets empty or blank attribute values in DynamoDB, treating them either as NULLs or as empty fields.

DynamoDB data types do not correspond directly with those of Amazon Redshift.

You need to ensure that each column in the Amazon Redshift table is of the correct data type and size to accommodate the data from DynamoDB.Since this is clearly mentioned in the AWS documentation , the other options are invalid.

For more information on Redshift for DynamoDB, please refer to the below URL.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/RedshiftforDynamoDB.html

When porting data from DynamoDB to Redshift, the following two factors need to be kept in mind:

  1. Ensure to enable DynamoDB streams: DynamoDB streams allow you to capture all the changes that have been made to your DynamoDB table, and this feature can be used to integrate DynamoDB with other AWS services. To port data from DynamoDB to Redshift, it is recommended to enable DynamoDB streams. This will allow you to track all the changes that are made to your DynamoDB table, and you can use this information to populate your Redshift table.

  2. Ensure the data type matches between engines: When migrating data from DynamoDB to Redshift, it is important to ensure that the data types match between the two engines. Redshift requires that the data be loaded in specific data types, and if the data types do not match, the data may not be loaded properly. For example, if a Redshift table requires an integer value, but the DynamoDB table has a string value, the data will not be loaded properly. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that the data types are consistent between the two engines.

Options B and D are not relevant to the process of porting data from DynamoDB to Redshift. Option B talks about empty attribute values in DynamoDB, which is not related to the process of porting data. Option D discusses global tables in DynamoDB, which are used to provide multi-region, multi-master replication. However, this is not relevant to the process of porting data from DynamoDB to Redshift.