LINQ to Amazon DynamoDB Data



LINQ offers versatile querying capabilities within the .NET Framework (v3.0+), offering a straightforward method for programmatic data access through CData ADO.NET Data Providers. In this article, we demonstrate the use of LINQ to retrieve information from the Amazon DynamoDB Data Provider.

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the Amazon DynamoDB via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for Amazon DynamoDB. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through LINQ.

See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

  1. In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
  2. Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
  3. Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData Amazon DynamoDB Data Source".
  4. Enter your data source connection information.

    The connection to Amazon DynamoDB is made using your AccessKey, SecretKey, and optionally your Domain and Region. Your AccessKey and SecretKey can be obtained on the security credentials page for your Amazon Web Services account. Your Region will be displayed in the upper left-hand corner when you are logged into DynamoDB.

    Below is a typical connection string:

    Access Key=xxx;Secret Key=xxx;Domain=amazonaws.com;Region=OREGON;
  5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting AmazonDynamoDBEntities as our entity connection in App.Config.
  6. Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.

Using the entity you created, you can now perform select , update, delete, and insert commands. For example:

AmazonDynamoDBEntities context = new AmazonDynamoDBEntities(); var leadQuery = from lead in context.Lead select lead; foreach (var result in leadQuery) { Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.Industry); }

See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.

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