SDK: Software Development Kit

If you want to perform actions on AWS directly from your application’s code without using a CLI, you can use an SDK

Official SDKs:

• Java
• .NET
• Node.js
• PHP
• Python
• Ruby
• C++

SDK Takeaways

• AWS SDK are required when coding against AWS Services such as DynamoDB
• Fact: AWS CLI uses the Python SDK (boto3)
• The exam expects you to know when you should use an SDK
• If you don’t specify or configure a default region, then us-east-1 will be chosen by default

SDK Credentials Security

• It’s recommend to use the default credential provider chain
• The default credential provider chain works seamlessly with:
  • AWS credentials at ~/.aws/credentials (only on our computers or on premise)
  • Instance Profile Credentials using IAM Roles (for EC2 machines, etc…)
• Environment variables (AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY)
• Overall, NEVER EVER STORE AWS CREDENTIALS IN YOUR CODE.
• Use IAM Roles if working from within AWS Services to inherit credentials

Exponential Backoff

• Any API that fails because of too many calls needs to be retried with Exponential Backoff
• These apply to rate limited API
• Retry mechanism is included in SDK API calls