Plain-English definitions of the developer terms for DVA-C02 study. Simplified for learning; AWS documentation is authoritative.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Lambda | Runs your code in response to events without managing servers. |
| API Gateway | Creates and manages REST and HTTP APIs. |
| DynamoDB | Managed NoSQL key-value and document database. |
| Partition key | The attribute DynamoDB uses to distribute data. |
| Sort key | Orders items sharing a partition key. |
| GSI | Global Secondary Index — an alternative query pattern. |
| SDK | Software Development Kit for calling AWS from code. |
| IAM role | Temporary, least-privilege credentials assumed by code. |
| Cognito | Handles user authentication and identity. |
| KMS | Key Management Service for encryption keys. |
| Secrets Manager | Stores and rotates secrets such as DB passwords. |
| Parameter Store | Stores configuration and secrets (Systems Manager). |
| SQS | Message queue for decoupling components. |
| SNS | Publish/subscribe messaging. |
| Dead-letter queue | Captures messages that repeatedly fail processing. |
| Idempotency | Safely retrying an operation without duplicate effects. |
| Exponential backoff | Retrying with increasing delays to handle throttling. |
| CodePipeline | Orchestrates build, test and deploy stages. |
| SAM | Serverless Application Model for defining serverless apps. |
| CloudFormation | Infrastructure as code using templates. |
| X-Ray | Traces and debugs distributed application requests. |
| CloudWatch | Metrics, logs and alarms for observability. |