Programming Amazon Web Services

Book excerpt: Building on the success of its storefront and fulfillment services, Amazon now allows businesses to "rent" computing power, data storage and bandwidth on its vast network platform. This book demonstrates how developers working with small- to mid-sized companies can take advantage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) such as the Simple Storage Service (S3), Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Simple Queue Service (SQS), Flexible Payments Service (FPS), and SimpleDB to build web-scale business applications. With AWS, Amazon offers a new paradigm for IT infrastructure: use what you need, as you need it, and pay as you go. Programming Amazon Web Services explains how you can access Amazon's open APIs to store and run applications, rather than spend precious time and resources building your own. With this book, you'll learn all the technical details you need to: Store and retrieve any amount of data using application servers, unlimited data storage, and bandwidth with the Amazon S3 service Buy computing time using Amazon EC2's interface to requisition machines, load them with an application environment, manage access permissions, and run your image using as many or few systems as needed Use Amazon's web-scale messaging infrastructure to store messages as they travel between computers with Amazon SQS Leverage the Amazon FPS service to structure payment instructions and allow the movement of money between any two entities, humans or computers Create and store multiple data sets, query your data easily, and return the results using Amazon SimpleDB. Scale up or down at a moment's notice, using these services to employ as much time and space as you need Whether you're starting a new online business, need to ramp up existing services, or require an offsite backup for your home, Programming Amazon Web Services gives you the background and the practical knowledge you need to start using AWS. Other books explain how to build web services. This book teaches businesses how to take make use of existing services from an established technology leader.