AWS DATABASES
Published: 2022-12-02 04:36:19

**WHAT IS A DATABASE**?
A database is an organized systematic collection  of structured logically related information which is electronically stored in a computer system so that it can be accessed easily for management and updating. This information can come in any form such as  words, numbers, images, videos, sales transactions, customer data, financials and product information. Databases management system also known as a Database, which is used for storing, maintaining and accessing any sort of information as mentioned above or more.  Most databases use structured query language (SQL) for writing and querying data.

**IMPORTANCE OF DATABASE**
**Data Integrity: Databases often have built-in rules and conditions to makes sure that the data is consistent and ensures integrity by making sure it is accurate even if multiple users are working in the system at once.

When there is a conflict in the data, the database automatically chooses one version over another so that only correct information is stored.

**Data Security**: Privacy and compliance requirements associated with any data is supported in a Database. Databases have various methods to ensure security of data. Your data is secure when it’s kept in a database. Different users might have different levels of access, such as read-only which authorizes certain individuals access, this prevents unauthorized users from gaining access to your sensitive data. 
There are also user logins required before accessing a database and various access specifiers allowing only authorized users to access the database

**Managing Data Efficiently**: Databases allow  many massive corporations  to easily manage large volume of data on a daily basis, scaling to millions, billions, and more. It is only possible to store this quantity of digital data with a database. This cannot work using spreadsheets. The database helps manage information more effectively than paper-based filing systems because they can store a greater volume of data.
It also allows to addition, deletion, or modification of information quickly and easily thereby keeping data up-to-date and accurate.

**Organization of Data**: keeps data organized systematically. It organizes and catalogs information otherwise you’d have to manually search for data in multiple different files and documents 
Databases makes it easier to find what you’re looking for and keep related data together the form of tables, records, files, rows and columns to allow easy access to the specific information you need at any point in time. Databases allow businesses and organizations to keep track of their company assets, which is important for maintaining accurate records

**Easy Research And Update**: It is very easy to access and research data in a database. This is done using Data Query Languages (DQL) which allow searching of any data in the database and performing computations on it. In a database, it is easy to update data using various Data Manipulation languages (DML) available. One of these languages is SQL.

**Ease Of Use And Reliable**
Databases are easy to use and accessed from any computer using internet connection allowing cooperation to quickly and easily get the information they need when it is needed.
Databases store data consistently and reliably. This helps to prevent the data from becoming corrupted.
If the data is stored in a database, it can be easily recovered, even if it is corrupted.
By using a database, you can save a lot of time in your organization and complete projects in less time than before. 
Very helpful when you need to access large amounts of data quickly and easily. In addition, a database can help you automate tasks which save you time and money in the long run

**For Business Performance**
Databases is necessary for any business to improve performance when is well managed. It is needed to keep track of your business operations, making it easier to analyze data. This guides you to make better decisions based on accuracy of information.

Additionally, a database can help you improve customer service, target marketing campaigns, and understand how well your business is performing.



**TYPES OF AWS DATABASES**
Amazon Relational Database Service: is a fully managed service provided by AWS and  is used when you have a finite amount of structured data and want to form links and joins between different tables. It allows users to set up, manage and monitor a database in the cloud. It stores data in tables with columns and rows, with each row representing a single record, differentiated with a unique ID known as a key, and each column containing data related to that record. It is not itself a database. Instead, it gives you the ability to run different relational databases as you want to.


**Amazon DynamoDB:** Amazon DynamoDB is a NoSQL database service fully managed by the AWS cloud which supports document-based data, managed and automated. It provides fast, predictable, and seamlessly scalable performance and it automatically handles the traffic of data on the multiple servers. It is a fully serverless service by AWS, so you don’t have to worry about capacity planning and scaling.  It aids businesses by offloading operating and scaling burdens in a distributed database.

**Amazon ElastiCache**: Amazon Elasticache is an easy-to-setup, managed, scalable, in-memory data caching, web service provided by AWS used to reduce the requests on your database, providing very low latency and high-performance to the user which is  cost-effective, and also scalable caching solutions. Gives two caching engines, namely, Memcached and Redis.


**Amazon Aurora**:  It is another Relational Database Engine built for the cloud, fully managed by AWS which provides support for MySQL and PostgreSQL. It means that code, applications, and drivers are used in the database. It has better performance capabilities than most commercial databases and it can auto-scale up to 64 TB per database instance. It provides better performance in terms of availability, scalability, and read replicas. Since Amazon Aurora is fully managed by RDS, all administrative tasks such as database setup, patching, backups, and more are fully automated. 

**Amazon Redshift**: Amazon Redshift is a fast and fully managed data warehouse service in the cloud designed to help us analyze and query available data set interpreting the data to gain more insight into our business and customers as well. It is a relational database, based on PostgreSQL. It offers query performance using SQL-based tools and business intelligence applications. The Redshift data warehouse can be scaled up to petabyte or more as per the requirements.


**Amazon Neptune**: It is different from the SQL database and is used for the visual representation of data using graphs. The data are connected and are correlated to each other and have some connection between them. You can run custom analysis on different sets of datasets and show results on the dashboards in the form of graphs. The main purpose of developing a graph database is network security, fraud detection, to understand the drug discovery, and so on. It provides multi-zone availability, read replication, encryption, backup, and recovery. To ensure data availability, it continuously replicates all its data to amazon S3 and other availability zones for  purposes of security and high availability as well.