AWS rolls out S3 Object Lambda to process data for multiple applications
Amazon Web Services on Thursday introduced a new feature that helps customers use the same dataset across multiple applications, regardless of their different requirements. The new S3 Object Lambda feature retrieves data from S3 and then automatically processes it and transforms it to work with existing applications.
AWS's Lambda serverless function service was a major focus at last year's AWS re:Invent conference.
There are a number of scenarios where the same dataset would prove useful for different applications with different data demands. For instance, an e-commerce site may want to use rich details from its customer dataset for its marketing campaigns; however, it may want to exclude those details for analytics purposes.
Typically, a customer would have to make copies of the dataset for each application, or they would have to build and manage infrastructure as a proxy layer to process it appropriately.
With S3 Object Lambda, a customers adds their own code to process data retrieved from S3 before returning it to an application. The Lambda function is invoked inline with a standard S3 GET request.
This capability should be useful for a variety of use cases, such as redacting personally identifiable information, converting across data formats (such as converting XML to JSON), augmenting data with information from other services or databases, or compressing or decompressing files as they are being downloaded.