I attended another .NET User Group meeting here in the 'Peg, this time my first in helping out with the board. Not a lot for me to do just yet, as I am still getting the hang of things there. However, I did have the opportunity to listen to a presentation on Web Services developed by Amazon.com (they aren't just books anymore!!).
Basically, with some of their web servicwa, Amazon is attempting to sell space and bandwidth in the ether instead of requiring every user to pony up the bucks to update their home systems. They realize that a lot of companies don't have the cash or resources to maintain an extremely large IT staff as well as maintaining the cost of the machines, software licenses, etc. So, with some of their web services, they have moved the information over to Amazon to process, maintain, and serve.
A few valid questions that I recall off the top of my head were posed...
1) Can I serve dynamic web pages from your data store?
The simple answer received was no. The data storage systems there can serve static HTML pages (along with javascript which isn't really dynamic content in my mind, but to each their own), but cannot serve up dynamic systems such as ASP.NET pages.
2) What happens to my data if the system goes under?
The answer received here is also quite simple: it won't anytime soon, if ever. Amazon is a huge company worldwide now, amd the chances of it vanishing in a puff of logic are next to nothing. That being said, it's always best to ensure that backups are available of your system in several locales. The data store here can be used to store backups, but if that is your only avenue of backups investigating a secondary method may be in your best interest (cost factor inhibiting, of course).
More information is available at http://aws.amazon.com
- K
All right. I am now joining the official realm of geeks with their thoughts online, instead of using LiveJournal or MySpace. Yes, I continue to use both of those, but this site is a little more... “geeky” than the others, for lack of a better word. It will let me post my techie thoughts (even though I am not as much of a programmer as I used to be) and keep them separate from the countless number of “Which !!!!!! are you?” posts on LJ and MySpace.
That's not to say I won't post non-geeky things here, and this may become my central locale for posting, but you never know...
- K