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Deprecated → MigratedData & BIAWS

Amazon SimpleDB Amazon DynamoDB

Serverless, fully managed, distributed NoSQL key-value and document database that succeeded Amazon SimpleDB with single-digit millisecond performance at any scale.

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Naming timeline

  1. Amazon SimpleDB

    · Initial Launch

    Launched in December 2007 as a schema-less NoSQL data store indexed by domains, items, and attributes (API version 2009-04-15).

  2. Amazon DynamoDBCurrent name

    · Successor Service Launch & Migration

    Launched as AWS's flagship managed NoSQL database superseding SimpleDB; in March 2026 AWS added native SimpleDB domain export to S3 to assist remaining migrations.

What replaced Amazon SimpleDB?

Amazon SimpleDB has been superseded by Amazon DynamoDB, with the latest change on 18 January 2012 (Successor Service Launch & Migration). Serverless, fully managed, distributed NoSQL key-value and document database that succeeded Amazon SimpleDB with single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. The underlying legacy API or CLI surface is deprecated, so a technical migration is required.

Also known as

  • SimpleDB
  • Amazon SDB

Technical identifiers

Legacy identifiers deprecated. The underlying API or CLI surface for the legacy name is officially deprecated, so this change requires a technical migration rather than a label update.

AWS Service APIs / SDKssdb dynamodb
AWS CLI Commandsaws dynamodb
IAM Actions & Policiessdb:* dynamodb:*
Terraform Resources (aws_*)aws_dynamodb_table aws_simpledb_domain

Legacy sdb APIs and sdb:* IAM actions are in maintenance mode (and aws sdb was removed in AWS CLI v2); all modern NoSQL workloads use dynamodb, aws dynamodb, and aws_dynamodb_table.

Notes & disambiguation

  • Launched in December 2007 as AWS's first NoSQL database service, Amazon SimpleDB was superseded on January 18, 2012 by Amazon DynamoDB, which overcame SimpleDB's 10 GB per-domain storage limit and scaling constraints.
  • Amazon SimpleDB is no longer available in the AWS Management Console or open to new workloads, and on March 11, 2026 AWS added a native StartDomainExport API to export legacy SimpleDB domains to Amazon S3 for migration and archival.
  • Legacy SimpleDB uses the sdb API namespace and sdb:* IAM actions (removed from AWS CLI v2 and modern Terraform AWS Provider releases), whereas Amazon DynamoDB uses dynamodb, aws dynamodb, dynamodb:*, and aws_dynamodb_table.

Sources & official documentation

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