Amazon DynamoDB
maang.io System Design Series
DynamoDB is AWS's fully-managed, serverless database from the Dynamo lineage — the same distribution ideas as Cassandra, but operated for you. Master its partition/sort keys, GSIs vs LSIs, capacity modes, tunable consistency, and query-first single-table design, and you can reason about planet-scale key-value systems and defend when to reach for it over a self-managed cluster.
This deep dive comes in four parts:
- Foundations & Core Concepts — the data model, keys, and partitions.
- Internals — capacity (RCU/WCU), adaptive capacity, indexes, and consistency, with worked numbers.
- Advanced Internals — Streams, TTL, and single-table design patterns.
- Interview — Staff/Principal Q&A: modeling, hot partitions, and DynamoDB vs Cassandra.