Amazon DynamoDB - Describe table

Declaration

<AMAWSDYNAMODB ACTIVITY="describe_table" PROVIDER="session_based" SESSION="text" ACCESSKEY="text" SECRETKEY="text (encrypted)" USERAGENT="text" MAXERRORRETRY="number" SERVICEURL="text" PROXYHOST="text" PROXYPORT="number" PROXYUSER="text" PROXYPWD="text (encrypted)" SIGNMETHOD="text" SIGNVERSION="number" NAME="text" RESULTDATSET="text" />

Related Topics  

Description

Retrieves information about a DynamoDB table and populates a dataset with results. Table information includes size, location, current status, primary key schema, creation date/time and much more.

Practical Usage

Used to retrieve table information in order to perform conditional operations.

Parameters

Connection

Property	Type	Required	Default	Markup	Description
Connection	---	---	---	---	Indicates where user credentials and preferences should originate from. This is a design mode parameter used only during task construction and configuration, thus, comprises no markup. The available options are: Host (default) - Specifies that user credentials and/or advanced preferences are configured individually for this activity. Normally chosen if only a single activity is required to complete an operation. Session - Specifies that user credentials and/or advanced preferences are obtained from a pre-configured session created in an earlier step with the use of the Amazon DynamoDB - Create session activity. Normally chosen if a combination of activities within the same action group are required. Linking several activities to a single session eliminates redundancy and improves efficiency. Multiple sessions can run simultaneously within a single task without interference.
Session	Text	Yes, if the connection is set to Session	DynamoDBSession1	SESSION="myDynamoDBsession"	The name of an existing session to associate with this activity. This parameter becomes active and is required if the Connection parameter is set to Session.
Access key	Text	Yes, if the connection is set to Host	(Empty)	ACCESSKEY="[accessKey]"	The ID that uniquely identifies the owner of the AWS service account (similar to a username). Together, the Access Key and Secret Access Key are the main credentials used to access and control basic AWS services through the API. This parameter is active only if the Connection parameter is set to Host.
Secret access key	Text	Yes, if the connection is set to Host	(Empty)	SECRETKEY="[SecretKey]"	The secret ID that corresponds with the Access Key (similar to a password). When a request is sent, AWS verifies that this key corresponds with the Access Key in order to authenticate the signature and confirm that the request sender is legitimate. This parameter is active only if the Connection parameter is set to Host.
User agent	Text	No	Automate	USERAGENT="Automate"	The name of the client or application initiating requests to AWS. The default value is Automate.
Maximum number retries on error	Number	No	(Empty)	MAXERRORRETRY="7"	The amount of times this activity should retry sending the request to the server before returning an error. Network components can generate errors anywhere in the life of a given request, therefore, implementing retries can increase reliability.
Service URL	Text	No	(Empty)	SERVICEURL="https://sdb.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com"	The URL that provides the service region endpoint. To make the service call to a different region, simply specify the region-specific endpoint. For example, entering https://dynamodb.us-east-1.amazonaws.com would point to US East (Northern Virginia) region. A complete list of DynamoDB regions and their associated endpoints  can be found below under DynamoDB Regions and Endpoints.
Proxy host	Text	No	(Empty)	PROXYHOST="proxy.host.com"	The host name (for example, server.domain.com) or IP address (for example, xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) of the proxy server to use when connecting to AWS.
Proxy port	Number	No	(Empty)	PROXYPORT="1028"	The port number to use to connect to the proxy server.
Proxy username	Text	No	(Empty)	PROXYUSERNAME="Username"	The username to authenticate with the proxy server.
Proxy password	Text	No	(Empty)	PROXYPWD="encrypted"	The password to authenticate with the proxy server.
Signature method	Text	No	(Empty)	SIGNMETHOD="HmacSHA256"	The signature method to use for signing the request. This provides a valid hashing algorithm for signature calculation. Valid AWS signature methods are HmacSHA1 and HmacSHA256.
Signature version	Number	No	(Empty)	SIGNVERSION="2"	The signature version for signing the request. Valid AWS signature versions are 2 and 4. The difference with version 4 is that it allows you to sign your message using a key that is derived from your secret access key rather than using the secret access key itself.

Table

Property	Type	Required	Default	Markup	Description
Table	Text	Yes	(Empty)	TABLE="myTable"	The name of the table to retrieve information about.
Create and populate dataset with table information	Text (options)	Yes	(Empty)	RESULTDATASET="mydata"	The name of the dataset to create and populate with information about table. For more details, see Datasets below.

Description

Error Causes

On Error

Additional Notes

DynamoDB Regions and Endpoints

This table contains a complete list of DynamoDB endpoints, associated regions and supported protocols.

Endpoint	Region	Protocol
elasticmapreduce.us-east-1.amazonaws.com	US East (Northern Virginia) Region	HTTP and HTTPS
elasticmapreduce.us-west-2.amazonaws.com	US West (Oregon) Region	HTTP and HTTPS
elasticmapreduce.us-west-1.amazonaws.com	US West (Northern California) Region	HTTP and HTTPS
elasticmapreduce.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com	EU (Ireland) Region	HTTP and HTTPS
elasticmapreduce.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com	Asia Pacific (Singapore) Region	HTTP and HTTPS
elasticmapreduce.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com	Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region	HTTP and HTTPS
elasticmapreduce.ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com	Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Region	HTTP and HTTPS
elasticmapreduce.sa-east-1.amazonaws.com	South America (Sao Paulo) Region	HTTP and HTTPS

Datasets

A dataset is a multi-column, multi-row object that contains a collection of information gathered during runtime and stored in memory. This activity creates and populates a dataset with the following fields (rows):

Name	Type	Return Value
theDataset.CreationDateTime	Date	The date and time that the table was created (i.e. 10/30/2011 7:43:00 AM).
theDataset.HashKey	Text	The current hash key.
theDataset.ItemCount	Number	The number of items in the table.
theDataset.Name	Text	The name of the table.
theDataset.RangeKey	Text	The current range key.
theDataset.ReadCapacity	Number	The current value of read capacity units.
theDataset.SizeBytes	Number	The total size of the specified table, in bytes.
theDataset.Status	Options	The current status of the table (for example, ACTIVE, UPDATING, DELETING).
theDataset.WriteCapacity	Number	The current value of write capacity units.

Example

Description

This sample task describes a table.