Difference between local and global indexes in DynamoDB

indexing amazon-dynamodb secondary-indexes
Michael Czolko picture Michael Czolko · Jan 27, 2014 · Viewed 58.2k times · Source

I'm curious about these two secondary indexes and differences between them. It is hard to imagine how this looks like. And I think, this will help more people than just me.

Answer

Chen Harel picture Chen Harel · Jan 27, 2014

Local Secondary Indexes still rely on the original Hash Key. When you supply a table with hash+range, think about the LSI as hash+range1, hash+range2.. hash+range6. You get 5 more range attributes to query on. Also, there is only one provisioned throughput.

Global Secondary Indexes defines a new paradigm - different hash/range keys per index.
This breaks the original usage of one hash key per table. This is also why when defining GSI you are required to add a provisioned throughput per index and pay for it.

More detailed information about the differences can be found in the GSI announcement

Related questions

How do I query DynamoDB2 table by global secondary index only using boto 2.25.0?

This is a continuation** of my quest to switch from regular DynamoDB tables to DynamoDB2 ones with Global Secondary Indices. So I created my table as shown here and then added the following two elements: table.put_item(data={'firstKey': …

Read More
Finding the index of an item in a list

Given a list ["foo", "bar", "baz"] and an item in the list "bar", how do I get its index (1) in Python?

Read More
Getting the last element of a list

In Python, how do you get the last element of a list?

Read More