Amazon has announced the new AWS SDK for Java this March. The aim of the new SDK is to simplify the development of java applications that are hosted on the Amazon EC2.
The Amazon EC2 is a proprietary web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. The AWS SDK attempts to make web-scale computing easier for developers. The AWS Toolkit for Eclipse automates most of the steps required for the development cycle such as deployment, debugging, instance launching and network access management on the Amazon cluster. Accessing the AWS SDK requires registration to the Amazon EC2 service.
The new AWS Java library is a single jar file that provides a set of APIs and attempts to hide much of the low-level plumbing usually associated with programming on the AWS cloud, including authentication, retries, and error handing. The library supports most of the current services including:
- Elastic Compute Cloud - A web service providing resizable compute capacity in the cloud
- Auto Scaling - A service that manages the number of instances used, scales up during demand spikes and scales down during demand lulls
- CloudWatch - A visualization tool for resource utilization, operational performance, and demand patterns
- Amazon Elastic Load Balancing - A utility that detects unhealthy instances within a pool and automatically reroutes traffic to healthy instances until the unhealthy instances have been restored
- The Virtual Private Cloud - A service that enables enterprises to connect existing infrastructure to a set of isolated AWS compute resources via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection, and extend existing management capabilities such as security services, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems to include their AWS resources
- Amazon SimpleDB - A non-relational data store
- The Simple Storage Service - A web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve data
- The Simple Queue Service - A service for moving and queuing data between distributed components of applications performing different tasks
- The Relational Database Service - A web service that attempts to simplify set up, operation, and scaling of relational databases in the cloud
- Amazon Elastic MapReduce - A web service for processing large data sets utilizing a hosted Hadoop framework running on the EC2 and the Simple Storage Service
Once an account on Amazon Web Services is established, the recommended development environment includes:
- Eclipse IDE EE version 3.5
- Java 1.5 JDK or above
- AWS Toolkit for Eclipse via Update Site: http://aws.amazon.com/eclipse
Documentation is available for Developing Java Web Applications with Apache Tomcat and AWS and for using the Eclipse AWS toolkit.