Off-by-none: Issue #268

February 27, 2024

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You down with STD? (Single Table Design, that is) 🌶️

In our previous issue, Cloudflare slayed a troll, we took a deep dive into LLRT, and compared Lambda containers to zip packaging. This week, I stand by single table designs, AWS advances zero-ETLs, and Lambda adds support for .NET 8. Plus, we have plenty of serverless content from the amazing community!

Serverless News & Announcements 📣

It's been quiet the last few weeks, but we all knew AWS was cooking up some good stuff for us! For you .NET fans, AWS Lambda added support for .NET 8. There is a more in depth article that shares more details, but the TL;DR is support for Amazon Linux 2023 and major performance improvements.

The most exciting announcement (for me) was that Amazon DynamoDB zero-ETL integration with Amazon Redshift in the US East (Virginia) region is now in preview. If you remember, back at re:Invent 2023, they announced several zero-ETL integrations. But using the power and scalability of DynamoDB to serve data to clients and then using Redshift to run analytics queries is a powerful duo. It's been in preview in the Ohio region for a few months, so hopefully this means we're getting closer to GA.

Amazon CloudFront announced availability of Embedded Points of Presence, which likely doesn't affect most of the apps you're building, but super interesting optimization that I hope expands to more than just videos and game downloads in the future.

In some other AWS news, AWS WAF now supports ruleMatchDetails for Regex rules, Amazon CloudWatch Logs now supports IPv6, and Amazon Neptune announces support for data APIs in the AWS SDK. Also, Mistral AI models are coming soon to Amazon Bedrock.

Finally, on the AWS side, they announced that AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store now supports cross-account sharing. This is hugely important because in order to fully embrace a true multi-account bulkhead strategy, AWS needs to enable more services to allow secure interactions across those boundaries.

Ever wonder how serverless functions handle increasing traffic? Well, thanks to Matthieu Napoli, you can now watch AWS Lambda scale.

The Ready, Set, Cloud! newsletter, published every week by Allen Helton, just pushed the 100th issue. That is quite an accomplishment, and a much appreciated contribution to the serverless community.

Ampt has been busy as well. We just introduced the Ampt CLI v1.1 with a new Interactive Tutorial that guides you through the processes of revolutionizing your cloud workflows.

Serverless Concepts 🏗

Never hurts to beef up your serverless knowledge. Here are a few articles that'll help you do just that:

• Cost-Effective Serverless: Safeguarding Your AWS Scans for Maximum Savings by Miguel Ramirez
• Node.js Lambda Package Optimization: Decrease Size and Increase Performance Using ES Modules by Levi9 Serbia
• What’s the best way to migrate Cognito users to a new user pool? by Yan Cui
• Exploring the Inner Workings of SST Live Lambda by Ali Haydar
• Cross-Account event forwarding within an AWS Organization by Dante Van den Broeke

Serverless Tutorials 👷‍♀️

And some great serverless tutorials to keep you busy:

• Image Labeling with Amazon Rekognition by Ayman Aly Mahmoud
• AWS Bedrock — Suspicious message detection by Omid Eidivandi
• Building an Event-Driven Application with AWS AppSync, EventBridge, and Step Functions by Benoît Bouré
• Convert Express Applications to Run on AWS Lambda with serverless-http by Matthew Zhao
• How to deploy your AWS Lambda based in containers with ECR by Lino Espinoza
• Automating tasks using Amazon Bedrock Agents and AI by Lee Gilmore
• Building near-real time automatic remediation for disabled S3 Block Public Access with serverless tools by Arpad Toth
• Seamless PDF Generation in the Cloud: Mastering Puppeteer and Chromium with Serverless and Lambda by Miguel Ramirez
• How I Built Automatic Click-Tracking and Content Spotlights For My Website by Allen Helton
• How to Set Up AWS S3 to EventBridge Rules for Efficient Data Handling by Durgaprasad Budhwani

Serverless Reads 🤓

First impressions of the fastest JavaScript runtime for Lambda
Yan Cui shares his thoughts on the new LLRT (Low Latency Runtime) for Lambda.

Dear New Code School Grad
Danielle Heberling shares some thoughts and advice on doing a software engineering career change in the year 2024.

On DynamoDB's Single Table Design
Siarhei Krukau wrote a post/rant about the recent backlash with Single Table Design in DynamoDB. He sums it up perfectly with "Don't be sorry for the great idea you gave us, and don't be angry at us for misusing it." More on this below.

Podcasts, Videos, and more 🎧

Lambda performance tuning | Serverless Office Hours
Luca Mezzalira and Matt Diamond join Julian Wood to discuss how to make useful optimizations in your function configuration and within your function code.

AWS Amplify Gen 2 Full stack CI/CD with Postgres (SSR, Web Compute, Auto-detection, SSM)
Stephen Siegert has a pretty cool demo that shows you how to create separate Neon database branches for each branch you create in your Amplify project.

How GenAI can help in CI/CD to speed up deployment decisions
Matt Martz presents an implementation of a Slackbot that governs and executes deployments using Github actions, augmented by GenAI (Bedrock) to conduct summaries of changes that pass through the CI/CD Pipeline.

Ampt Live: Building a dynamic Server-Side Rendered (SSR) site on AWS with Hono & HTMX
I walk you through building a dynamically rendered site deployed to AWS with Ampt using Hono as the web framework and HTMX to add interactivity.

Real World Serverless Episode #97: He created the fastest JavaScript runtime for AWS Lambda
Yan Cui speaks with Richard Davison, the creator of the new LLRT (Low Latency Runtime) for Lambda.

Create your AWS Step Functions workflows with AWS CDK
Marcia Villalba teaches you how to build and deploy your AWS Step Functions using the CDK.

What is Event-First Design? The Fundamental Part of Designing Event Driven Systems
James Eastham explains what event-first design is and why he believes it's probably THE MOST important part of building event-driven systems.

New from AWS 🆕

Here are some more AWS announcements that caught my eye:

• Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) Elastic Clusters supports readable secondaries, and start and stop clusters
• AWS AppConfig L2 constructs now available for AWS CDK
• Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) now supports Partial Indexes
• NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB adds support for cloning tables
• AWS Amplify Hosting announces support for custom SSL certificates/TLS
• Amazon Neptune now supports for Amazon OpenSearch 2.3, 2.5, and Serverless
• Elastic Beanstalk now supports Windows 2022
• Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) Elastic Clusters now support automatic backups and snapshot copying
• AWS Resource Explorer supports 65 new resource types

Serverless Tools 🛠

juricaKenda/dynamodb.client
A Go module containing an AWS DynamoDB client wrapper.

Thoughts from Social 🐦

I hear a lot of criticism of the work I did on DynamoDB Single Table Design these days. I even saw @alexbdebrie apologizing for being an advocate the other day. The core concept behind STD, however, has always been the same as it is for all #NoSQL databases.

What is accessed…

— Rick Houlihan (@houlihan_rick) February 22, 2024

I love Single Table Design in DynamoDB, and I won't apologize for it. I've shared many thoughts on this, but the bottom line is: if you use it incorrectly (like most things in this world) it's gonna burn ya! I've pushed Single Table Designs way past where I should have and have the scars to prove it. But I don't regret it, because when used properly, it's an amazingly powerful pattern. I agree with Siarhei Krukau that maybe the proper guidance wasn't always there, but that doesn't negate how amazing an idea it still is.

"Everyone has an opinion, and that's fine. However, some opinions are wrong, but they can reach many people." ~ Slobodan Stojanović (in defense of serverless complexity)

I kinda wish Slobodan had time to waste on online arguments. I know they're generally not productive, but I always appreciate his takes.

Upcoming Serverless Events 🗓

February 29, 2024 - How PostNL Found Success Embracing Serverless in the Enterprise with Luc van Donkersgoed

March 7, 2024 - Buckle Up, We're Getting Event Driven with James Eastham

May 21, 2024 - ServerlessDays ANZ - Sydney, AU

May 24, 2024 - ServerlessDays ANZ - Auckland, NZ

June 13, 2024 - ServerlessDays Milano 2024 🗣️

Please send me your serverless events!

Star of the Week ⭐️

This week's star is Allen Helton (@AllenHeltonDev). Allen was our Star of the Week back in October of 2022, but since then, his dedication and contributions to the serverless community have only increased. He went on to start the Ready, Set, Cloud Podcast!, join Momento as an Ecosystem Engineer, and has continued to produce amazing serverless content every week. This week marks the 100th issue of the Ready, Set, Cloud Newsletter! As someone who has experience publishing a newsletter every week, I know what type of commitment this takes. Allen's energy and enthusiasm for serverless is unparalleled, and he's an inspiration to us all and a testament to the power of community. Thanks again, Allen!

Final Thoughts 🤔

Quite the spicy serverless week! Some great announcements from AWS, lots of great content, and a fiery defense to what (I still think) is a brilliant data storage pattern. Are you not entertained? 😀

Maybe it's just me. 🤷‍♂️

Anyway, I've been chugging along on my Fraglates package, including some enhancements to the streaming feature. I'm also building something with it that I think you'll all enjoy, so stay tuned for that.

See you next week,
Jeremy

I hope you enjoyed this newsletter. We’re always looking for ideas and feedback to make it better and more inclusive, so please feel free to reach out to me via X, LinkedIn, or email.