Category: AWS – What’s New

Amazon Rekognition: Revolutionizing Visual Analysis

Amazon Rekognition: Revolutionizing Visual Analysis

Overview

Amazon Rekognition is a machine learning service that uses deep learning models to analyze images and videos. You can access it through the AWS console, the AWS CLI, or the AWS SDKs. You can also use its API to integrate it with your own applications.

Rekognition is a powerful service that allows you to analyze images and videos for various purposes. You can use it to detect faces, objects, scenes, emotions, text, celebrities, and more. In this blog post, we will explore some of the features, benefits, and applications of Rekognition.

Main Features

Amazon Rekognition offers a wide range of features for image and video analysis. Some of the main features are:

  • Face detection and analysis: You can detect faces in images and videos and get information such as age range, gender, emotion, pose, quality, landmarks, and facial attributes.
  • Object and scene detection: You can detect and label objects and scenes in images and videos, such as cars, animals, flowers, buildings, etc.
  • Text detection: You can detect and extract text from images and videos, such as street signs, license plates, captions, etc.
  • Celebrity recognition: You can recognize celebrities in images and videos and get information such as name, face bounding box, confidence score, and URLs of relevant web pages.
  • Content moderation: You can detect inappropriate or unsafe content in images and videos, such as nudity, violence, drugs, etc.
  • Face comparison: You can compare two faces in images or videos and get a similarity score between 0 and 100.
  • Face search: You can search for faces in a collection of images or videos that match a given face image or video.
  • Facial analysis: You can analyze facial features in images or videos and get information such as smile, eyeglasses, sunglasses, beard, mustache, etc.

Benefits of Amazon Rekognition

Amazon Rekognition offers many benefits for image and video analysis. Some of the benefits are:

  • Easy to use: You don’t need any machine learning expertise to use it. You just need to provide an image or video file or a URL and get the results in JSON format.
  • Scalable: You can process millions of images and videos with Amazon Rekognition without worrying about infrastructure or capacity.
  • Accurate: Uses advanced deep learning models trained on large images and videos datasets. It can handle various scenarios such as low lighting, occlusion, blur, etc.
  • Secure: Encrypts your data at rest and in transit. You can also control access to your data using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).
  • Cost-effective: You only pay for what you use with Amazon Rekognition. You are charged based on the number of images or videos processed and the features used.

Application of Amazon Rekognition

Amazon Rekognition has many applications for image and video analysis. Some of the applications are:

  • Social media: Enhance your social media experience by adding features such as face detection, face recognition, emotion detection, text detection, etc.
  • E-commerce: Improve your e-commerce platform by adding features such as product search, product recommendation, product cataloging, etc.
  • Security: Enhance your security system by adding features such as face verification, face identification, face search, etc.
  • Entertainment: Create engaging content by adding features such as celebrity recognition, content moderation, video analysis, etc.

Conclusion

Amazon Rekognition is a powerful service that allows you to analyze images and videos for various purposes. It offers a wide range of features such as face detection, object detection, text detection, celebrity recognition, content moderation, face comparison, face search, and facial analysis. It also offers many benefits such as ease of use, scalability, accuracy, security, and cost-effectiveness. It has many social media, e-commerce, security, and entertainment applications. If you want to learn more about Amazon Rekognition, you can visit the official website or check out the documentation.

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Amazon Connect: Elevating Customer Service with AI

Amazon Connect: Elevating Customer Service with AI

Overview

Amazon Connect is a cloud-based contact center solution that allows you to create personalized and engaging customer experiences. With Amazon Connect, you can leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to automate tasks, enhance interactions, and improve outcomes. In this blog post, we will explore some of the features, benefits, and applications of Amazon Connect with AI.

Features of Amazon Connect with AI

Amazon Connect offers a range of features that enable you to use AI in your contact center, such as:

  • Amazon Lex: Provides natural language understanding and speech recognition capabilities. You can use Amazon Lex to create conversational chatbots and voicebots that can understand customer intents and respond accordingly.
  • Amazon Comprehend: Analyzes text and extracts insights such as sentiment, entities, topics, and key phrases. You can use Amazon Comprehend to understand customer feedback, identify issues, and discover trends.
  • Amazon Transcribe: Converts speech to text. Amazon Transcribe can transcribe customer calls, generate subtitles, and create searchable archives.
  • Amazon Polly: Converts text to speech. You can use Amazon Polly to synthesize natural-sounding voices for your chatbots and voicebots, or to provide text-to-speech functionality for your customers.
  • Amazon Kendra: Provides intelligent search capabilities. You can use Amazon Kendra to enable your customers to find answers to their questions using natural language queries.

Benefits of Amazon Connect with AI

By using Amazon Connect with AI, you can achieve several benefits for your contact center, such as:

  • Reduce costs: Reduce operational costs by automating repetitive tasks, optimizing agent utilization, and scaling up or down as needed.
  • Increase efficiency: Streamline workflows, reduce wait times, and resolve issues faster.
  • Enhance customer satisfaction: Enhance customer satisfaction by providing personalized and relevant responses, offering self-service options, and delivering consistent, high-quality service.
  • Improve customer loyalty: Improve customer loyalty by building trust, exceeding expectations, and creating memorable experiences.

Application of Amazon Connect with AI

Amazon Connect with AI can be applied to various use cases in different industries, such as:

  • Retail: To provide product recommendations, process orders and returns, handle complaints, and upsell or cross-sell products.
  • Healthcare: To schedule appointments, provide health information, collect feedback, and triage patients.
  • Finance: To verify identity, provide account information, offer financial advice, and facilitate transactions.
  • Education: To enroll students, provide course information, answer queries, and conduct assessments.

Conclusion

Amazon Connect with AI is a powerful solution that can help you transform your contact center and deliver exceptional customer experiences. You can leverage the power of natural language processing, machine learning, and deep learning to automate tasks, enhance interactions, and improve outcomes. To learn more, click here.

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Generative AI Innovation Center of AWS

Generative AI Innovation Center of AWS

Empowering AI Advancements: Unveiling the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center

Introduction

In this blog post, we delve into the forefront of generative AI research and development at the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center. Pioneering advancements and a spirit of collaboration actively reshape the vast landscape of artificial intelligence.

Generative AI, a dynamic branch, originates content—images, text, music, speech—unleashing possibilities. Furthermore, it enhances creativity, augments productivity, and solves complex issues. Leading the charge in generative AI is the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center (GAIC). Established in December 2020 through a visionary alliance between Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the National University of Singapore (NUS), this partnership takes a stance at the forefront of generative AI research, nurturing a vibrant ecosystem of collaboration spanning academia, industry, and government.

The GAIC: A Unique Hub for Innovation

Distinguished as the first of its kind in Asia-Pacific and among a distinguished few globally, the GAIC is exclusively dedicated to advancing the realm of generative AI. By harnessing the synergistic resources of AWS and the academic prowess of NUS, alongside the expertise of diverse collaborators, they collectively fuel pioneering research initiatives, incubate innovative solutions, and nurture the emerging generation of AI luminaries.

Generative AI Innovation Center: Research Frontiers

Guided by an unquenchable thirst for innovation, the GAIC embarks on multifaceted research domains, encompassing:

  • Natural language generation crafts coherent text across diverse applications: summarization, translation, dialogue, storytelling.
  • Computer vision creates lifelike, diverse images, in tasks like synthesis, inpainting, super-resolution, style transfer.
  • The center orchestrates expressive audio, from speech synthesis to musical composition and soundscapes.
  • Data augmentation constructs synthetic data, addressing data scarcity in classification, segmentation, detection tasks.Generative AI Innovation Center: Achievements

Generative AI Innovation Center: Achievements

The GAIC’s recent accomplishments form an impressive testament to its pioneering spirit:

  • The center developed a text-to-image framework, transforming language into high-res, multifaceted images.
  • It pioneered a distinct image inpainting dataset with intricate scenarios, from substantial occlusions to complex backgrounds and objects.
  • It crafted a state-of-the-art speech synthesis system for natural, expressive speech, precise prosody, and emotion control.
  • Additionally, the center tailors intricate, user-preference-driven musical compositions from scratch.

A Beacon of Knowledge and Collaboration

Extending beyond its own boundaries, the GAIC stands as a beacon of knowledge and collaboration for the wider AI community. It achieves this through workshops, seminars, hackathons, and competitions, evolving into a dynamic platform for showcasing research outcomes, fostering innovative idea exchange, and sparking the flames of creativity. Enriching this initiative are tailor-made training programs and courses, catering to students, researchers, developers, and practitioners keen on immersing themselves in the realms of generative AI and its multifaceted applications.

Generative AI Innovation Center: Conclusion

The promise of the GAIC unfolds in the convergence of AWS’s computational prowess and NUS’s academic distinction—an initiative poised to redefine the horizons of generative AI. With a steadfast commitment to generating positive societal impacts, the GAIC emerges as a global vanguard, propelling the transformation of generative AI research and development into an unparalleled journey of innovation.

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AWS-Powered Generative AI Innovations

AWS-Driven GenAI Breakthroughs Explored

Exploring Generative AI: Unveiling Seven AWS-Driven Breakthroughs

AWS-Driven GenAI Breakthroughs: Overview

Generative AI is a branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on creating new content from data, such as text, images, audio, or video. Generative AI has many applications, such as content creation, data augmentation, style transfer, etc. In this blog post, we will explore seven new AWS-Driven GenAI Breakthroughs, the cloud computing platform that offers a wide range of tools and services for building and deploying generative AI solutions.

Amazon SageMaker Data Wrangler

This is a new feature of Amazon SageMaker, the fully managed service that enables developers and data scientists to build, train, and deploy machine learning models quickly and easily. Data Wrangler simplifies preparing data for generative AI models, such as cleaning, transforming, and visualizing data. Data Wrangler also integrates with popular open-source frameworks like TensorFlow and PyTorch to enable seamless data ingestion and processing. Know more about Amazon SageMaker Data Wrangler.

Amazon SageMaker Clarify

This new feature of Amazon SageMaker helps developers and data scientists understand and mitigate bias in their generative AI models. Clarify provides tools to analyze the data and the model outputs for potential sources of bias, such as demographic or linguistic differences. Clarify also provides suggestions to improve the fairness and accuracy of the models, such as reweighting the data or applying post-processing techniques. Know more about Amazon SageMaker Clarify.

AWS DeepComposer

This creative learning tool allows anyone to create original music using generative AI. DeepComposer consists of a musical keyboard and a web-based console that lets users choose from different genres and styles of music, such as jazz, rock, or classical. Users can then play or record their melodies on the keyboard and let the generative AI model complete the composition. Users can also share their creations with others on SoundCloud or social media. Know more about AWS DeepComposer.

AWS DeepRacer

This is a fun and engaging way to learn about reinforcement learning, a generative AI that enables agents to learn from their actions and rewards. DeepRacer is a 1/18th scale autonomous racing car that can be trained using reinforcement learning algorithms on AWS. Users can design their racetracks and compete with others in virtual or physical races. Users can join the AWS DeepRacer League, the world’s first global autonomous racing league. Know more about AWS DeepRacer.

AWS DeepLens

This wireless video camera enables developers to run deep learning models on the edge. DeepLens can create generative AI applications involving computer vision, such as face detection, object recognition, or style transfer. DeepLens comes pre-loaded with several sample projects demonstrating generative AI’s capabilities, such as generating captions for images or synthesizing speech from lip movements. Know more about DeepLens.

Amazon Polly

This service turns text into lifelike speech using generative AI. Polly supports over 60 languages and voices, including natural-sounding neural voices that can express emotions and intonations. Polly can create engaging audio content for various purposes, such as podcasts, audiobooks, e-learning, or voice assistants. Know more about Amazon Polly.

Amazon Rekognition

This service analyzes images and videos using generative AI. Rekognition can perform face recognition, emotion detection, text extraction, or content moderation tasks. Rekognition can also generate new content from existing images or videos, such as adding filters, stickers, or animations. Know more about Amazon Rekognition.

AWS-Driven GenAI Breakthroughs: Conclusion

Generative AI is an exciting and rapidly evolving field that offers many possibilities for creating new and valuable content. AWS provides a comprehensive and scalable platform for developing and deploying generative AI solutions across various domains and use cases. Whether you are a beginner or an expert in generative AI, AWS has something to explore and enjoy.

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Getting to Know AWS Image Pipeline and Its Components

AWS Image Pipeline: Beginner’s Guide

If you want to automate the creation and management of Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), you can use the AWS Image Builder service. This service allows you to create image pipelines that define the source image, the configuration, and the distribution settings for your AMIs. In this blog post, we will show you how to create AWS image pipeline using the AWS Management Console.

AWS Image Pipeline: Overview

AWS image pipeline consists of four main components:

  • An image recipe: This defines the source image, the components, and the tests that are applied to your image. Components are scripts or documents that specify the actions to perform on your image, such as installing software, configuring settings, or running commands. Tests are scripts or documents that verify the functionality or security of your image.
  • An infrastructure configuration: This defines the AWS resources that are used to build and test your image, such as the instance type, the subnet, the security group, and the IAM role.
  • A distribution configuration: This defines where and how to distribute your image, such as the regions, the accounts, and the output formats (AMI, Docker, etc.).
  • An image pipeline: This links the image recipe, the infrastructure configuration, and the distribution configuration together. It also defines the schedule and the status of your image building process.

Procedures

To create an image pipeline in AWS, follow these steps:

  1. Open the AWS Management Console and access the Image Builder service.
  2. In the left navigation pane, choose Image pipelines and then choose Create image pipeline.
  3. In the Create image pipeline page, enter your image pipeline’s name and optional description.
  4. Under Image recipe, choose an existing image recipe or create a new one. To create a new one, choose Create new and follow the instructions on the screen. You will need to specify a source image (such as an Amazon Linux 2 AMI), a version number, a parent image recipe (optional), components (such as AWS-provided components or custom components), and tests (such as AWS-provided tests or custom tests).
  5. Under Infrastructure configuration, choose an existing infrastructure configuration or create a new one. To create a new one, choose Create new and then follow the instructions on the screen. You will need to specify a name, an instance type, a subnet, a security group, and an IAM role for your image builder.
  6. Under Distribution settings, choose an existing distribution configuration or create a new one. To create a new one, choose Create new and then follow the instructions on the screen. You will need to specify a name, regions, accounts, and output formats for your image distribution.
  7. Under the Image pipeline settings, choose a schedule for your image pipeline. You can choose to run it manually or automatically on a cron expression. You can also enable or disable enhanced image metadata and change notifications for your image pipeline.
  8. Choose Create to create your image pipeline.

AWS Image Pipeline: Conclusion

In this blog post, we have shown you how to create an image pipeline in AWS using the Image Builder service. This service allows you to automate the creation and management of AMIs with customized configurations and tests. You can also distribute your AMIs across regions and accounts with ease. To learn more about the Image Builder service, you can visit the official documentation.

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Unlocking the Power: Amazon Redshift Serverless Features & Benefits

Amazon Redshift Serverless: Features & Benefits

Amazon Redshift Serverless – Advantages and Features

Introduction

Amazon Redshift Serverless represents a monumental shift in analytics infrastructure management. In this blog post, we explore its cutting-edge features and the myriad advantages it brings to the table.

Cutting-Edge Features of Amazon Redshift Serverless

Amazon Redshift Serverless streamlines analytics operations and scaling, eliminating the complexities of traditional data warehouse infrastructure management. Some of its latest features include:

  • Intelligent and Dynamic Scaling: The dynamic adjustment of capacity ensures rapid performance, even for unpredictable workloads. Machine learning algorithms monitor query patterns, optimally distributing compute resources. Users gain precise control by setting minimum and maximum capacities for workgroups.
  • Pay-As-You-Go Pricing: It adopts a pay-per-use pricing model, charging users solely for consumed resources on a per-second basis. Idle periods incur no charges, while spending limits for workgroups maintain budget adherence.
  • User-Friendly Interface: Transitioning is seamless, enabling effortless adoption of potent analytics capabilities. It preserves existing applications and functionalities like machine learning. Users access familiar SQL syntax, geospatial functions, user-defined functions, and more, with existing tools and integrations like Amazon Redshift Query Editor, AWS Glue Data Catalog, and AWS Lambda available for utilization.
  • Streamlined Data Lake Integration: It harmoniously integrates with Amazon S3-based data lakes, facilitating data querying through parallel processing. AWS Lake Formation enhances security, governance, and cataloging over the data lake.

Advantages

Amazon Redshift Serverless offers a streamlined approach to analytics, freeing users from the intricacies of data warehouse infrastructure management. Some benefits include:

  • Instant Data Insights: Expedited initiation of real-time or predictive analytics execution across data, eradicating the need for complex infrastructure management.
  • Consistently High Performance: Automated dynamic scaling ensures unwavering, high-speed performance under dynamic workloads, mitigating performance degradation.
  • Budgetary Savings and Precision: Pay-per-use pricing and granular spending controls eliminate wastage and overprovisioning, guaranteeing adherence to budgets.
  • Unleashed Analytics Power: Embracing Amazon Redshift Serverless grants users access to its stellar SQL capabilities, top-tier performance, and seamless data lake integration, all without compromising existing applications.

Conclusion

Amazon Redshift Serverless transforms analytics infrastructure management by offering dynamic scaling, pay-per-use pricing, and seamless data lake integration. This revolutionary approach unlocks insights, ensures performance, and optimizes costs, all while maintaining user-friendliness. The combined power of features and advantages ushers in a new era of analytics possibilities.

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Optimizing Resource Allocation: Cross-Account Service Quotas in Amazon CloudWatch

Cross-Account Service Quotas in Amazon CloudWatch

Amazon CloudWatch enhances monitoring with Cross-Account Service Quotas.

Overview

In this blog post, we will discuss what Cross-Account Service Quotas are and how they can help you monitor and manage your AWS resources across multiple accounts. Cross-Account Service Quotas is a feature of Amazon CloudWatch that allows you to view and modify the service quotas of your AWS services for all the accounts in your organization from a single dashboard. This can help you avoid hitting service limits, optimize your resource usage, and simplify your quota management workflow. Discover various use cases:

  • Check usage of specific services like EC2 instances, Lambda functions, or S3 buckets.
  • Adjust quotas for services across accounts, no need to log in separately.
  • Automate quota management with CloudFormation templates or AWS CLI.
  • Set up alarms or dashboards to monitor quota usage and receive notifications.

Cross-Account Service Quotas: Usage

Leverage this feature to:

  • View quotas and usage for all accounts or specific organizational units.
  • Request quota increases for multiple accounts from the master account.
  • Delegate quota management to trusted member accounts.
  • Monitor quota usage through CloudWatch Alarms.

Prerequisites

To use this feature, you need to:

  • Enable AWS Organizations, create an organization with two or more accounts.
  • Enable trusted access between CloudWatch and Organizations.
  • Grant permissions to master and delegated member accounts.
  • Access Service Quotas via console or API.

Cross-Account Service Quotas: Conclusion

Simplify quota management for organizations with multiple AWS accounts. Avoid service disruptions and optimize resource utilization. To enable this feature, you need to have an AWS Organizations account and enable trusted access between CloudWatch and Organizations. Then, you can use the CloudWatch console or API to view and modify the quotas of your services for each account in your organization. You can also set up alarms and notifications to alert you when a quota is approaching or exceeding its limit.

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Level Up Your Containerization: AWS Karpenter Adds Windows Container Compatibility

AWS Karpenter Supports Windows Containers: What’s New

Windows Container Support Arrives in AWS Karpenter: What You Need to Know

If you run Windows containers on Amazon EKS, you might find the latest update from AWS intriguing: Karpenter now supports Windows containers. AWS has introduced this update, enabling Windows container compatibility in Karpenter, an open-source project that delivers a high-performance Kubernetes cluster autoscaler. In this blog post, we will explore Karpenter, its functioning, and the benefits it brings to Windows container users.

What is AWS Karpenter?

Karpenter is a dynamic Kubernetes cluster autoscaler that adjusts your cluster’s compute capacity based on your application requirements. Unlike the traditional Kubernetes Cluster Autoscaler, which relies on predefined instance types and Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling groups, Karpenter can launch any EC2 instance type that matches the resource requirements of your pods. By choosing the right-sized instances, Karpenter optimizes your cluster for cost, performance, and availability.

Karpenter also extends support for node expiration, node upgrades, and spot instances. You can configure Karpenter to automatically terminate nodes after a specific period of inactivity or when they become idle. Additionally, you can enable Karpenter to upgrade your nodes to the latest Amazon EKS Optimized Windows AMI, enhancing security and performance. Karpenter offers a feature to initiate spot instances, enabling you to save up to 90% on your computing expenses.

As an open-source project, Karpenter operates under the Apache License 2.0. It is designed to function seamlessly with any Kubernetes cluster, whether in on-premises environments or major cloud providers. You can actively contribute to the project by joining the community on Slack or participating in its development on GitHub.

How does AWS Karpenter work?

Karpenter operates by observing the aggregate resource requests of unscheduled pods in your cluster and launching new nodes that best match their scale, scheduling, and resource requirements. It continuously monitors events within the Kubernetes cluster and interacts with the underlying cloud provider’s compute service, such as Amazon EC2, to execute commands.

To utilize Karpenter, you need to install it in your cluster using Helm and grant it permission to provision compute resources on your cloud provider. Additionally, you should create a provisioner object that defines the parameters for node provisioning, including instance types, labels, taints, expiration time, and more. You have the flexibility to create multiple provisioners for different types of workloads or node groups.

Once a provisioner is in place, Karpenter actively monitors the pods in your cluster and launches new nodes whenever the need arises. For example, if a pod requires 4 vCPUs and 16 GB of memory, but no node in your cluster can accommodate it, Karpenter will launch a new node with those specifications or higher. Similarly, if a pod has a node affinity or node selector based on a specific label or instance type, Karpenter will launch a new node that satisfies the criteria.

Karpenter automatically terminates nodes when they are no longer required or when they reach their expiration time. For instance, if a node remains inactive without any running pods for more than 10 minutes, Karpenter will terminate it to optimize costs. Similarly, if a node was launched with an expiration time of 1 hour, Karpenter will terminate it after 1 hour, irrespective of its utilization.

What are the benefits of using AWS Karpenter for Windows containers?

By leveraging Karpenter for Windows containers, you can reap several advantages:

  • Cost Optimization: Karpenter ensures optimal infrastructure utilization by launching instances specific to your workload requirements and terminating them when not in use. You can also take advantage of spot instances to significantly reduce compute costs.
  • Performance Optimization: Karpenter enhances application performance by launching instances optimized for your workload’s resource demands. You can assign different instance types to various workloads or node groups, thereby achieving better performance outcomes.
  • Availability Optimization: Karpenter improves application availability by scaling instances in response to changing application loads. Utilizing multiple availability zones or regions ensures fault tolerance and resilience.
  • Operational Simplicity: Karpenter simplifies cluster management by automating node provisioning and termination processes. You no longer need to manually adjust the compute capacity of your cluster or create multiple EC2 Auto Scaling groups for distinct workloads or node groups.

Conclusion

Karpenter stands as a robust tool for Kubernetes cluster autoscaling, now equipped to support Windows containers. By leveraging Karpenter, you can optimize your cluster’s cost, performance, and availability, while simultaneously simplifying cluster management. To explore further details about Karpenter, visit the official website or the GitHub repository. For insights on running Windows containers on Amazon EKS, refer to the EKS best practices guide and Amazon EKS Optimized Windows AMI documentation.

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Amazon DynamoDB Local

Amazon DynamoDB Local v2.0: What’s New

Learn About Amazon DynamoDB local version 2.0

Amazon DynamoDB is a NoSQL database service that is fully managed and guarantees speedy and consistent performance while also being seamlessly scalable. It allows you to store and query any data without worrying about servers, provisioning, or maintenance. But what if you want to develop and test your applications locally without accessing the DynamoDB web service? That’s where Amazon DynamoDB local comes in handy.

What is Amazon DynamoDB local?

Amazon DynamoDB local is a downloadable version of Amazon DynamoDB that you can run on your computer. It simulates the DynamoDB web service so that you can use it with your existing DynamoDB API calls.

It is ideal for development and testing, as it helps you save on throughput, data storage, and data transfer fees. In addition, you don’t need an internet connection while you work on your application. You can use it with any supported SDKs, such as Java, Python, Node.js, Ruby, .NET, PHP, and Go. You can also use it with the AWS CLI or the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio.

What’s New in Amazon DynamoDB Local version 2.0?

Amazon DynamoDB local version 2.0 was released on July 5, 2023. It has some important changes and improvements that you should know about.

Migration to jakarta.* namespace

The most significant change is the migration to use the jakarta.* namespace instead of the javax.* namespace. This means that Java developers can now use Amazon DynamoDB local with Spring Boot 3 and frameworks such as Spring Framework 6 and Micronaut Framework 4 to build modernized, simplified, and lightweight cloud-native applications.

The jakarta.* namespace is part of the Jakarta EE project, which is the successor of Java EE. Jakarta EE aims to provide a platform for developing enterprise applications using Java technologies.

Suppose you are using Java SDKs or tools that rely on the javax.* namespace, you will need to update them to use the jakarta.* namespace before using Amazon DynamoDB local version 2.0. For more information, see Migrating from javax.* to jakarta.*.

Updated Access Key ID convention

Another change is the updated convention for the Access Key ID when using Amazon DynamoDB local. The new convention specifies that the AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID can only contain letters (A–Z, a–z) and numbers (0–9).

This change was made to align with the Access Key ID convention for the DynamoDB web service, which also only allows letters and numbers. This helps avoid confusion and errors when switching between Amazon DynamoDB local and the DynamoDB web service.

If you use an Access Key ID containing other characters, such as dashes (-) or underscores (_), you must change it before using version 2.0. For more information, see Troubleshooting “The Access Key ID or Security Token is Invalid” Error After Upgrading DynamoDB Local to Version 2.0 or Greater.

Bug fixes and performance improvements

It also includes several bug fixes and performance improvements that enhance the stability and usability.

For example, one of the bug fixes addresses an issue where version 1.19.0 had an empty jar file in its repository, causing errors when downloading or running it. This issue has been resolved in version 2.0.

Getting Started with Amazon DynamoDB local version 2.0

  • Getting started is easy and free. You can download it from Deploying DynamoDB locally on your computer and follow the instructions to install and run it on your preferred operating system (macOS, Linux, or Windows).
  • You can also use as an Apache Maven dependency or as a Docker image if you prefer those options.
  • Once you have Amazon DynamoDB local running on your computer, you can use any of the supported SDKs, tools, or frameworks to develop and test your applications locally.

Conclusion

Amazon DynamoDB local version 2.0 is a great way to develop and test your applications locally without accessing the DynamoDB web service. It has some important changes and improvements that make it compatible with the latest Java technologies and conventions. Suppose you are a Java developer who wants to use it with Spring Boot 3 or other frameworks that use the jakarta.* namespace, you should upgrade to version 2.0 as soon as possible.

If you are using other SDKs or tools that rely on the javax.* namespace or an Access Key ID containing other characters, you will need to update them before using. It is free to download and use, and it works with your existing DynamoDB API calls. You can start with it today by downloading it from Deploying DynamoDB locally on your computer.

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Amazon SageMaker Canvas

Amazon SageMaker Canvas: What’s New

Amazon SageMaker Canvas Operationalize ML Models in Production

Amazon SageMaker Canvas is a new no-code machine learning platform that allows business analysts to generate accurate ML predictions without writing any code or requiring any ML expertise. It was launched at the AWS re:Invent 2021 conference and is built on the capabilities of Amazon SageMaker, the comprehensive ML service from AWS.

What is Amazon SageMaker Canvas?

Amazon SageMaker Canvas is a visual, point-and-click interface that enables users to access ready-to-use models or create custom models for a variety of use cases, such as:

  • Detect sentiment in free-form text
  • Extract information from documents
  • Identify objects and text in images
  • Predict customer churn
  • Plan inventory efficiently
  • Optimize price and revenue
  • Improve on-time deliveries
  • Classify text or images based on custom categories

Users can import data from disparate sources, select values they want to predict, automatically prepare and explore data, and create an ML model with a few clicks. They can also run what-if analysis and generate single or bulk predictions with the model. Additionally, they can collaborate with data scientists by sharing, reviewing, and updating ML models across tools. Users can also import ML models from anywhere and generate predictions directly in Amazon SageMaker Canvas.

What is Operationalize ML Models in Production?

Operationalize ML Models in Production is a new feature of Amazon SageMaker Canvas that allows users to easily deploy their ML models to production environments and monitor their performance. Users can choose from different deployment options, such as:

  • Real-time endpoints: Users can create scalable and secure endpoints that can serve real-time predictions from their models. Users can also configure auto-scaling policies, encryption settings, access control policies, and logging options for their endpoints.
  • Batch transformations: Users can run batch predictions on large datasets using their models. Users can specify the input and output locations, the number of parallel requests, and the timeout settings for their batch jobs.
  • Pipelines: Users can create workflows that automate the steps involved in building, deploying, and monitoring their models. Users can use pre-built steps or create custom steps using AWS Lambda functions or containers.

Users can also monitor the performance of their deployed models using Amazon SageMaker Model Monitor, which automatically tracks key metrics such as accuracy, latency, throughput, and error rates. Users can also set up alerts and notifications for any anomalies or deviations from their expected performance.

Benefits of Amazon SageMaker Canvas

It offers several benefits for business analysts who want to leverage ML for their use cases, such as:

  • No-code: Users do not need to write any code or have any ML experience to use Amazon SageMaker Canvas. They can use a simple and intuitive interface to build and deploy ML models with ease.
  • Accuracy: Users can access ready-to-use models powered by Amazon AI services, such as Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Textract, and Amazon Comprehend, that offer high-quality predictions for common use cases. Users can also build custom models trained on their own data that are optimized for their specific needs.
  • Speed: Users can build and deploy ML models in minutes using Amazon SageMaker Canvas. They can also leverage the scalability and reliability of AWS to run large-scale predictions with low latency and high availability.
  • Collaboration: Users can boost collaboration between business analysts and data scientists by sharing, reviewing, and updating ML models across tools. Users can also import ML models from anywhere and generate predictions on them in Amazon SageMaker Canvas.

How to get started?

To get started, users need to have an AWS account and access to the AWS Management Console. Users can then navigate to the Amazon SageMaker service page and select Amazon SageMaker Canvas from the left navigation pane. Users can then choose from different options to start using Amazon SageMaker Canvas:

  • Use Ready-to-use models: Users can select a ready-to-use model for their use case, such as sentiment analysis, object detection in images, or document analysis. They can then upload their data and generate predictions with a single click.
  • Build a custom model: Users can import their data from one or more data sources, such as Amazon S3 buckets, Amazon Athena tables, or CSV files. They can then select the value they want to predict and create an ML model with a few clicks. They can also explore their data and analyze their model’s performance before generating predictions.
  • Import a model: Users can import an ML model from anywhere, such as Amazon SageMaker Studio or another tool. They can then generate predictions on the imported model without writing any code.

Users can also deploy their models to production environments and monitor their performance using Operationalize ML Models in Production feature.

Conclusion

Amazon SageMaker Canvas is a new no-code machine learning platform that allows business analysts to generate accurate ML predictions without writing any code or requiring any ML expertise. It offers several benefits, such as accuracy, speed, and collaboration, for users who want to leverage ML for their use cases. It also enables users to easily deploy their models to production environments and monitor their performance using Operationalize ML Models in Production feature. Users can get started with Amazon SageMaker Canvas by accessing it from the AWS Management Console and choosing from different options to use ready-to-use models, build custom models, or import models from anywhere.

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