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I am working on a site (ASP.NET MVC) that will ultimately display millions of book. I already have the titles and authors of these books in my MySQL database.

The goal is when a user searches for book, the top 20 matches (title and author) will appear on the page. I then plan to use the Amazon API to get more information (isbn, image, description etc) for these 20 books and flesh out these items via Ajax. I would then also add this info to MySQL so next time these specific books are requested, I already have the data.

My question is what Amazon Web Service should I use? There are so many like Amazon S3, Amazon SimpleDB etc. I just don't know which would be best for my needs. Cost is also a factor.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

John Rotenstein
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chrisg229
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  • Amazon S3 is a storage service AFAIK so don't look into that. I would look into web services. – Icarus Oct 12 '11 at 14:22
  • I need to be able to pass a book title into some amazon api function and pull out the proper image, isbn ect to then store in my own DB. Any particular web service you'd recommend for that? – chrisg229 Oct 12 '11 at 16:56

2 Answers2

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The API you're looking for is Amazon's Product Advertising API:

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/advertising/api/detail/main.html

SamS
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in short, Amazon S3 is a technology oriented on large data storage whilst SimpleDB is a non relational database (as mongoDB and raven could be).

We use the first for storing the static files (javascript, css and pictures).

The first is cheaper but you can only retrieve a "file" at once. The second gives you some degree of support to queries.

If you need a relational database, you could use Amazon RDS which is a MySql database ready for replicas.

Kralizek
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  • I don't think I need a relational database. I just need to be able to pass a book title into some amazon api function and pull out the proper image, isbn ect to then store in my own DB. Any particular web service you recommend for that? – chrisg229 Oct 12 '11 at 16:55
  • those services are for your own sake. they are totally independent from Amazon stores. I really don't have any clue on how to access Amazon's store via API. – Kralizek Oct 13 '11 at 06:58