Amazon Web Services Blog

AmazonBox now uses ECS4

AmazonBox has been recently upgraded to take advantage of Version 4 of ECS.

AmazonBox lets a site owner place their Wishlist, a Listmania list or Marketplace Seller list on their website from either Amazon.com, .co.uk or .de. It is set up by using a form on the website, the appearance is configurable via CSS, and you can also syndicate your Wishlist or Listmania list via RSS or Atom feeds.

It can be used by Amazon Associates, (an associate can include their associate id in the product links and buy buttons), or non-Amazon associates.

A new feature for Amazon.com Wishlists lets someone buy an item and have it shipped direct to the Wishlist owner.

Learn more at http://www.edazzle.net/amazon/ .

Join the AWS Team!

We have a number of positions open on the AWS team:

1. Senior Software Engineer, Amazon Web Services, #03-009644
2. Software Development Engineer - Amazon Web Services , #04-010075
3. Programmer/Writer, Amazon Web Services, #04-10051
4. Technical Product/Program Manager, Amazon Web Services, #03-009979
5. Sr. Financial Analyst- Associates and Web Services, #04-12566

Each job description includes an "Apply Now" link. These are all permanent, full-time positions and ther are multiple openings for some of the positions.

ECS 3 & 4 Issues Fixed

We fixed several issues with ECS 3.0 and 4.0 on Tuesday, November 23rd:

• Similarities should once again be available.
• Images that were not being returned correctly last week have been fixed.
• The major UTF-8 encoding issues that began occurring last Friday have been resolved. We're still looking into a few problems, but the major ones have been addressed.

ECS Bug Fixes

We just rolled out the latest ECS bits. This release fixes the following three problems:

1. Image URLs broken
2. Broken TransactionLookup for orders with child items
3. Similarities broken for 3.0 and 4.0

Instant Associates Store

GMP Services has released the Instant Associate Store; here is the full press release.

Take a look at the Sample Store to see what this product can do, and take a look at the sample screen shots to see how it works.

Features include:

• Very easy setup and maintenance (3 step process to install)
• Built-in URL re-writer to change database query URL's into static URL's
• Product category pages have product image, title and brief description
• Product detail also includes the product details such as type, manufacturer and other detailed information.
• Product Titles auto inserted into page titles (top of web browser - meta title)
• Add your own meta tag title, description and keywords via the admin area

And much more....

Have you built an application with AWS? Drop us a note at awseditor@amazon.com and tell us all about it.

Updated AIM Document

The newest version of the AIM (Amazon Inventory Management) document can be downloaded here (225 KB Microsoft Word Document).

Alexa Web Information Service -- Sample Style Sheets

We have created some sample XSLT style sheets for the Alexa Web Information Service (AWIS). You are free to use these as-is or to copy them and modify them as needed to suit your own needs.

Use client.alexa.com/awis/xsl/ExampleSearch.xsl to format the XML returned from a call to the AWIS Search function.

Use client.alexa.com/awis/xsl/ExampleUrlInfo.xsl to format the XML returned from a call to the AWIS URLInfo function.

Use client.alexa.com/awis/xsl/ExampleBrowse.xsl  to format the XML returned from a call to the AWIS Category function.

Here are sample AWIS calls which make use of these style sheets. Remember to replace "SUB_ID" with your subscription ID. You should also take care to remove any embedded space characters in the URLs (we added these to keep the page from getting too wide).

Search - http://aws-beta.amazon.com/onca/xml?Service=AlexaWebInfoService& Operation=Search&ContentType=text/html&Query=ExampleSearchHomePage& Style=http:
//client.alexa.com/awis/xsl/ExampleSearch.xsl& SubscriptionId=SUB_ID .

URLInfo - http://aws-beta.amazon.com/onca/xml?Url=www.food.com&Service=AlexaWebInfoService& Operation=UrlInfo&ContentType=text/html& ResponseGroup=RelatedLinks,Categories,Related, Rank,UsageStats,TrafficData,ContactInfo,AdultContent,Speed,Language,ContentData& Style=http://client.alexa.com/awis/xsl/ExampleUrlInfo.xsl&SubscriptionId=SUB_ID

Category - http://aws-beta.amazon.com/onca/xml?Service=AlexaWebInfoService& Operation=Category&ResponseGroup=Browse&ContentType=text/html& Style=http://clien
t.alexa.com/awis/xsl/ExampleBrowse.xsl&Path=Top& SubscriptionId=SUB_ID

Featured Offers Available in ECS 3.0

You may now set the "offers" parameter to "Featured" in ECS 3.0 AsinSearch requests. Setting "offers" to "Featured" will allow you to retrieve featured merchants' offers using ECS 3.0. A featured merchant is a vendor with whom Amazon has a special partnership and whose offers are prominently featured on Amazon product detail pages.  Prior to now, accessing featured merchants' offers was only possible in ECS 4.0.

Here is a sample ECS 3.0 AsinSearch request that shows how this new parameter value works:

http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3?dev-t=SUB_ID&t=ASSOCIATE_TAG&AsinSearch=B0000CD0B7&f=xml&type=heavy&offer=Featured

Remember to replace "SUB_ID" with your developer token or subscription ID and "ASSOCIATE_TAG" with your own Associate ID or "webservices-20". Since featured merchants do not exist on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, and Amazon.co.jp, this new parameter value only applies to the US version of ECS 3.0.

UML Diagrams for ECS and AWIS

Dave Carlson of XMLModeling.com created and posted UML diagrams for ECS and AWIS:

• ECS - http://www.xmlmodeling.com/models/amazon/ecs
• AWIS - http://www.xmlmodeling.com/models/amazon/awis

As Dave says, "UML diagrams are very helpful when learning the service information model -- I am new to the AWS and created these diagrams to help me understand the messages."

Very cool. Thanks, Dave!

The official UML site defines UML as follows:

A specification defining a graphical language for visualizing, specifying, constructing, and documenting the artifacts of distributed object systems.

Improved Images in ECS 3.0

ECS 3.0 was recently updated to return correct product images for new Amazon.com product categories, including Apparel, Gourmet Food, Sporting Goods, Beauty, Health & Personal Care, and Jewelry.