Access Live Amazon DynamoDB Data in Spring Boot

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Connect Java applications with the DynamoDB real-time NoSQL cloud database service. Use Amazon DynamoDB as the big data backend that powers your Java/J2EE applications.

Connect to Amazon DynamoDB in a Spring Boot Application using CData JDBC Amazon DynamoDB Driver

Spring Boot is a framework that makes engineering Java web applications easier. It offers the ability to create standalone applications with minimal configuration. When paired with the CData JDBC driver for Amazon DynamoDB, Spring Boot can work with live Amazon DynamoDB data. This article shows how to configure data sources and retrieve data in your Java Spring Boot Application, using the CData JDBC Driver for Amazon DynamoDB.

With built-in optimized data processing, the CData JDBC Driver offers unmatched performance for interacting with live Amazon DynamoDB data. When you issue complex SQL queries to Amazon DynamoDB, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Amazon DynamoDB and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (often SQL functions and JOIN operations). Its built-in dynamic metadata querying allows you to work with and analyze Amazon DynamoDB data using native data types.

Creating the Spring Boot Project in Java

In an IDE (in this tutorial, we use IntelliJ), choose a Maven project: In the generated project, go to the pom.xml file, and add the required dependencies for Spring Boot:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>2.7.2</version>
<relativePath/>
</parent>
<groupId>com.example</groupId>
<artifactId>demo</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<name>demo</name>
<description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>
<properties>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>
<build>
<plugins>
	<plugin>
		<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
		<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
	</plugin>

	<plugin>
		<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
		<artifactId>maven-install-plugin</artifactId>
		<version>2.5.1</version>
		<executions>
			<execution>
				<id>id.install-file</id>
				<phase>clean</phase>
				<goals>
					<goal>install-file</goal>
				</goals>
				<configuration>
					<file>C:\Program Files\CData\CData JDBC Driver for Amazon DynamoDB ####\lib\cdata.jdbc.amazondynamodb.jar</file>
					<groupId>org.cdata.connectors</groupId>
					<artifactId>cdata-amazondynamodb-connector</artifactId>
					<version>21</version>
					<packaging>jar</packaging>
				</configuration>
			</execution>
		</executions>
	</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>

<dependencies>
<dependency>
	<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
	<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
	<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
	<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-jdbc</artifactId>
	<version>2.7.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
	<groupId>org.cdata.connectors</groupId>
	<artifactId>cdata-amazondynamodb-connector</artifactId>
	<version>21</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
	<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
	<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
	<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>



<distributionManagement>
<repository>
	<uniqueVersion>false</uniqueVersion>
	<id>test</id>
	<name>My Repository</name>
	<url>scp://repo/maven2</url>
	<layout>default</layout>
</repository>
</distributionManagement>

</project>

Project Structure

In the java directory, create a new package. Usually the name of the package is the name of the groupId (com.example) followed by the artifactId (.MDS).

Make sure that the "java" directory is the sources root; this is indicated with a blue color. You may need to right click the java directory and select Mark Directory -> Sources Root. Also, the resources directory should be marked as Resources Root.

Database Connection Properties

In the application.properties file, we set the configuration properties for the Amazon DynamoDB JDBC Driver, using the Class name and JDBC URL:


	spring.datasource.driver=cdata.jdbc.amazondynamodb.AmazonDynamoDBDriver
	spring.datasource.url=jdbc:amazondynamodb:Access Key=xxx;Secret Key=xxx;Domain=amazonaws.com;Region=OREGON;

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Amazon DynamoDB JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.


java -jar cdata.jdbc.amazondynamodb.jar

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.

Using the built-in connection string designer to generate a JDBC URL (Salesforce is shown.)

After setting the properties in the application.properties file, we now configure them.

Data Source Configuration

First, we mark the Amazon DynamoDB data source as our primary data source. Then, we create a Data Source Bean.

Create a DriverManagerDataSource.java file and create a Bean within it, as shown below. If @Bean gives an error, Spring Boot may not have loaded properly. To fix this, go to File -> Invalidate Caches and restart. Additionally, make sure that Maven has added the Spring Boot dependencies.

To create a data source bean, we use DriverManagerDataSource Class. This class allows us to set the properties of the data source. The following code shows the bean definition of our data source. Each driver should have a bean.


import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.jdbc.DataSourceBuilder;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Primary;
import org.springframework.core.env.Environment;
import javax.sql.DataSource;

public class DriverManagerDataSource{
	@Autowired
	private static Environment env;

	@Bean(name ="AmazonDynamoDB")
	@Primary
	public static DataSource AmazonDynamoDBDataSource()
	{

	DataSourceBuilder<?> dataSourceBuilder = DataSourceBuilder.create();
		dataSourceBuilder.driverClassName("cdata.jdbc.amazondynamodb.AmazonDynamoDBDriver");
		dataSourceBuilder.url("jdbc:amazondynamodb:Access Key=xxx;Secret Key=xxx;Domain=amazonaws.com;Region=OREGON;");
		return dataSourceBuilder.build();
	}
	
	//@Override
	public void setEnvironment( final Environment environment) {
	env=environment;
	}
}

Next, move the Amazon DynamoDB jar file to the Documents folder (see path in command below). Then, click the Maven icon (top right corner of IntelliJ) and click "Execute Maven Goal." Now, run the following command: mvn install:install-file -Dfile=C:\Program Files\CData\CData JDBC Driver for Amazon DynamoDB ####\lib\cdata.jdbc.amazondynamodb.jar -DgroupId=cdata.jdbc.amazondynamodb -DartifactId=cdata-amazondynamodb-connector -Dversion=21 -Dpackaging=jar

After pressing enter, we see the following output:

Testing the Connection

The last step is testing the connection. We call the data source in the main method of MDSApplication.java:


import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.jdbc.DataSourceAutoConfiguration;
import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.SQLException;
import static com.example.demo.DriverManagerDataSources.AmazonDynamoDBDataSource;


@SpringBootApplication(exclude = {DataSourceAutoConfiguration.class})
	public class MDSApplication {
		//remove the comment on the line below
		public static void main (){
		SpringApplication.run(DemoApplication.class, args);
		Connection conn = AmazonDynamoDBDataSource().getConnection();
		System.out.println("Catalog: "+ conn.getCatalog());
	}
}

The output generated should look like this:

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