Amazon Web Services Blog

AWS Event Calendar: Talks and Chats

We are now maintaining an online calendar of AWS Events at eventful.com . This calendar contains a worldwide list of upcoming talks by members of the AWS Developer Relations Team. It also contains an entry for each weekly chat session. You can visit the calendar on a regular basis, or you can simply subscribe to the RSS  feeds or visit the calendar to subscribe using iCal.

SOAPUI - Web Service Inspection and Testing Tool

Soapui is an open source Java 1.5 tool (with a Swing UI) for inspecting and testing SOAP-based web services. It supports WSDL importing, request generation, an unlimited number of requests per operation, multiple service endpoints for the same service, validation, three types of authentication, and background processing.

(found on webservices.org)

Updated Link for Amazon India Jobs

The previously published link to the jobs page for the Amazon Development Center in Bangalore was incorrect. That link has been fixed. The proper page is http://india.amazon.com/openings.php .

Behind the Scenes at Microsoft, A9, and Amazon

Microsoft's IE blog is reporting on the behind the scenes efforts which lead up to the recent announcement that IE7 will support A9.com's OpenSearch interface. You can read even more about this on the A9 blog.

While this is not directly related to AWS, it is a perfect example of how open standards (e.g. XML and HTTP), common formats (e.g. RSS), generous licensing, and direct person to person collaboration can take an idea from concept to production in a matter of weeks.

Through an odd twist of fate, the two Amazonians involved (Dewitt Clinton and Jeff Barr) were once colleagues on the same team at Microsoft. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.

ECS 4 Updated

We rolled out a new release of ECS 4 last night. Please check out the Release Notes, Documentation, and the Known Issues.

The WSDL version is 2005-09-15.

Amazon at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference

The Amazon Developer Relations team is currently on site at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, California.

If you are at the conference, please feel free to stop by and say hello to the AWS gang.

SMS is SMileS Better

Recently I spent sometime talking with Amir of Txtfo, for those of you who don’t know who or what Txtfo are, there are a company with a great idea; namely to allow you to use SMS technology available on all mobile phones to get information from Amazon. This information can be anything that’s supported by AWS.

How does it work?

Using Txtfo you can send a simple text and instantly search on amazon.co.uk for any Book, CD or DVD anytime, anywhere.  It’s a nice application as it gives the customer more control over their purchase, as they can now tell availability and pricing from Amazon.co.uk all via SMS. The Customer also receives an email, so if they want to, the next time they go online, they can continue the purchase process

With the long run in to Christmas looming on the horizon, I can see this application being heavily used, it works well with word of mouth. Someone gives me an idea for a present I can check it out now, if there is a long waiting list, no problem Amazon.co.uk can take the order and fulfill it when the product become available. No more waiting around or trying to remember a present idea for me

For those of you interested in finding out more about txtfo, check out the following:

• The core product:  http://www.txtfo.com/text_sells.ppt
• Pricing: http://www.txtfo.com/txtfo_pricing.pdf
• A Case Study: http://www.txtfo.com/bloomsbury_case_study.pdf

-- Don

REST vs SOAP

With all the debate about SOAP vs REST I thought it would be worth a few column inches pointing out the differences between the two.

REST is an architectural style. SOAP is a message format. With SOAP there is a well defined processing and extensibility model. The two are not directly comparable in my opinion. The confusions comes as both approaches (for lack of a better word) are used to deliver web services.

In the future I would hope to see both REST and SOAP being offered (as they are in our very own Amazon Web Services AWS), there are peculiar advantages for each approach.

There is the simplicity, of REST with its HTTP verbs allowing for simple querying of a distant resource, and the coming transactional model support in SOAP, that will allow for far more complicated activities via Web Services.

In fact using SOAP 1.2 many of the RESTful features people so love (e.g. URI interface) can be combined with a SOAP payload, I think this is the beginning of an beautiful friendship.

REST’s straight forward nature offers low barriers of entry into using web services, this has resulted in the typical take up being 80% skewed in favor of REST  implementations by our own AWS.

I tend to think of REST as an introduction to the world of web services, and introduction that’s mostly good enough, especially for now, but one where it may need to be combined with some of the heavy weight features being built into SOAP for future applications.

My advice is pick the best one for you, but keep an eye on both as I am certain they have a bright future together

Don

Scoble goes to Amazon and Learns All About Web Services & Developer Contest

Robert Scoble of Microsoft's Channel 9 recently paid a visit to Amazon's Seattle office to interview Jeff Barr and Steve Rabuchin of Amazon's Developer Relations team. In this 19 minute video, you can see how developers are using Amazon's Web Services in a variety of ways. You can also learn about the joint Amazon/Microsoft Developer Contest, which features $5,000 in prizes.

Amazon's Werner Vogels: On Memory Lane

Halley Suitt of IT Conversations rececently interviewed Amazon's Werner Vogels and has released the results as a podcast, which you can get here. Werner talks about Amazon's history, some of his thoughts on privacy, and the future of search and search engines.

PS - Perhaps this will prod Werner to update his blog!