Today, Amazon Redshift announces the launch of history mode for zero-ETL integrations. This new feature enables you to build Type 2 Slowly Changing Dimension (SCD 2) tables on your historical data from databases, out-of-the-box in Amazon Redshift, without writing any code. History mode simplifies the process of tracking and analyzing historical data changes, allowing you to gain valuable insights from your data’s evolution over time.

With history mode, you can easily run advanced analytics on historical data, build lookback reports, and perform trend analysis across multiple zero-ETL data sources, including Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon RDS for MySQL, Amazon Aurora MySQL, and Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL. By preserving the complete history of data changes without maintaining duplicate copies across data sources, history mode helps organizations meet data storage requirements while significantly reducing storage needs and operational costs. History mode is available for both existing and new integrations. You can selectively enable historical tracking for specific tables within your integration for enhanced flexibility in your data analysis.

To learn more and get started with zero-ETL integration, visit the getting started guides for Amazon Redshift. For more information on history mode and its benefits, visit the documentation.
 

 

​Today, Amazon Redshift announces the launch of history mode for zero-ETL integrations. This new feature enables you to build Type 2 Slowly Changing Dimension (SCD 2) tables on your historical data from databases, out-of-the-box in Amazon Redshift, without writing any code. History mode simplifies the process of tracking and analyzing historical data changes, allowing you to gain valuable insights from your data’s evolution over time. With history mode, you can easily run advanced analytics on historical data, build lookback reports, and perform trend analysis across multiple zero-ETL data sources, including Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon RDS for MySQL, Amazon Aurora MySQL, and Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL. By preserving the complete history of data changes without maintaining duplicate copies across data sources, history mode helps organizations meet data storage requirements while significantly reducing storage needs and operational costs. History mode is available for both existing and new integrations. You can selectively enable historical tracking for specific tables within your integration for enhanced flexibility in your data analysis. To learn more and get started with zero-ETL integration, visit the getting started guides for Amazon Redshift. For more information on history mode and its benefits, visit the documentation.    

Amazon EC2 introduces new capabilities that make it easy for customers to target instance launches on their On-Demand Capacity Reservations (ODCRs). On-Demand Capacity Reservations help you reserve compute capacity for your workloads in a specified Availability Zone for any duration. You can now ensure instance launches are fulfilled exclusively by ODCRs, or prefer unutilized ODCRs before falling back to On-Demand capacity.

To get started, you can specify your capacity reservation preferences for your EC2 Auto Scaling groups via the AWS Console or the AWS CLI. These preferences can also be configured using EC2 RunInstances API calls.

These features are available in both of the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. To learn more, see the Capacity Reservations user guide and EC2 Auto Scaling user guide.
 

 

​Amazon EC2 introduces new capabilities that make it easy for customers to target instance launches on their On-Demand Capacity Reservations (ODCRs). On-Demand Capacity Reservations help you reserve compute capacity for your workloads in a specified Availability Zone for any duration. You can now ensure instance launches are fulfilled exclusively by ODCRs, or prefer unutilized ODCRs before falling back to On-Demand capacity. To get started, you can specify your capacity reservation preferences for your EC2 Auto Scaling groups via the AWS Console or the AWS CLI. These preferences can also be configured using EC2 RunInstances API calls. These features are available in both of the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. To learn more, see the Capacity Reservations user guide and EC2 Auto Scaling user guide.    

 AWS Marketplace sellers can now price usage rates with up to 8 decimal places. This enhancement improves the precision of pay-as-you-go pricing where per-unit costs can be fractions of a cent ($0.00000001), enabling more accurate billing calculations for customers.

Previously, AWS Marketplace sellers were limited to using only 3 decimal places for usage pricing, restricting flexibility in pricing pay-as-you-go products. This increased precision gives sellers more control over pricing strategies. Sellers can now set more granular per-unit costs (for example, per megabyte or gigabyte), allowing for more accurate billing. This also benefits sellers operating in different currencies, allowing them to set more accurate equivalent US dollar (USD) prices in AWS Marketplace. Additionally, sellers can maintain specific profit margins with greater precision. For example, resellers can set a retail price of $0.0033 to maintain an exact 10% margin on a $0.003 wholesale price. These improvements offer sellers greater control and precision in pricing, leading to more granular rates for customers and improved profitability for sellers, especially in markets where small price differences matter.

This feature is available for software as a service (SaaS), server, and AWS Data Exchange products in all AWS Regions where AWS Marketplace is available.

To learn more, access AWS Marketplace Product Pricing documentation and AWS Marketplace API documentation. Start using this feature through the AWS Marketplace Management Portal or the AWS Marketplace Catalog API.

 

​ AWS Marketplace sellers can now price usage rates with up to 8 decimal places. This enhancement improves the precision of pay-as-you-go pricing where per-unit costs can be fractions of a cent ($0.00000001), enabling more accurate billing calculations for customers. Previously, AWS Marketplace sellers were limited to using only 3 decimal places for usage pricing, restricting flexibility in pricing pay-as-you-go products. This increased precision gives sellers more control over pricing strategies. Sellers can now set more granular per-unit costs (for example, per megabyte or gigabyte), allowing for more accurate billing. This also benefits sellers operating in different currencies, allowing them to set more accurate equivalent US dollar (USD) prices in AWS Marketplace. Additionally, sellers can maintain specific profit margins with greater precision. For example, resellers can set a retail price of $0.0033 to maintain an exact 10% margin on a $0.003 wholesale price. These improvements offer sellers greater control and precision in pricing, leading to more granular rates for customers and improved profitability for sellers, especially in markets where small price differences matter. This feature is available for software as a service (SaaS), server, and AWS Data Exchange products in all AWS Regions where AWS Marketplace is available. To learn more, access AWS Marketplace Product Pricing documentation and AWS Marketplace API documentation. Start using this feature through the AWS Marketplace Management Portal or the AWS Marketplace Catalog API.  

Today, Amazon Web Services, Inc. announces that AWS IoT SiteWise now supports NULL and NaN (Not a Number) data of bad or uncertain data quality from industrial data sources. AWS IoT SiteWise is a managed service that makes it easy to collect, store, organize, and analyze data from industrial equipment at scale. This new feature enhances the services capability to handle a wider range of data, improving its utility for industrial applications.

With this update, AWS IoT SiteWise now collects, stores, and retrieves real-time or historical NULL values for all supported data types. It also supports NaN values of double data type. Capturing NULL and NaN data is critical for various industrial use cases, including compliance reporting, observability, and downstream analytics, while also simplifying data set conditioning and cleaning for advanced analytics and machine learning applications.

This new feature is available in all AWS Regions where AWS IoT SiteWise is available. To learn more about data ingestion and processing data quality on AWS IoT SiteWise, see AWS IoT SiteWise Documentation.

 

​Today, Amazon Web Services, Inc. announces that AWS IoT SiteWise now supports NULL and NaN (Not a Number) data of bad or uncertain data quality from industrial data sources. AWS IoT SiteWise is a managed service that makes it easy to collect, store, organize, and analyze data from industrial equipment at scale. This new feature enhances the services capability to handle a wider range of data, improving its utility for industrial applications. With this update, AWS IoT SiteWise now collects, stores, and retrieves real-time or historical NULL values for all supported data types. It also supports NaN values of double data type. Capturing NULL and NaN data is critical for various industrial use cases, including compliance reporting, observability, and downstream analytics, while also simplifying data set conditioning and cleaning for advanced analytics and machine learning applications. This new feature is available in all AWS Regions where AWS IoT SiteWise is available. To learn more about data ingestion and processing data quality on AWS IoT SiteWise, see AWS IoT SiteWise Documentation.  

Amazon CloudWatch Database Insights now collects the query execution plans of top SQL queries running on Aurora PostgreSQL instances, and stores them over time. This feature helps you identify if a change in the query execution plan is the cause of performance degradation or a stalled query. Execution plan capture for Aurora PostgreSQL is available exclusively in the Advanced mode of CloudWatch Database Insights.

A query execution plan is a sequence of steps that database engines use to retrieve or modify data in a relational database management system (RDBMS). The RDBMS query optimizers may not always choose the most optimal execution plan from a set of alternative ways to execute a given query. Hence, database users sometimes need to manually examine and tune the plans to improve performance. This feature allows you to visualize multiple plans of a SQL query and compare them. It can help you determine if a change in performance of a SQL query is due to a different query execution plan within minutes.

You can get started with this feature by enabling Database Insights Advanced mode on your Aurora PostgreSQL clusters using the RDS service console, AWS APIs, or the AWS SDK. CloudWatch Database Insights delivers database health monitoring aggregated at the fleet level, as well as instance-level dashboards for detailed database and SQL query analysis.

CloudWatch Database Insights is available in all public AWS Regions and offers vCPU-based pricing – see the pricing page for details. For further information, visit the Database Insights documentation.

 

​Amazon CloudWatch Database Insights now collects the query execution plans of top SQL queries running on Aurora PostgreSQL instances, and stores them over time. This feature helps you identify if a change in the query execution plan is the cause of performance degradation or a stalled query. Execution plan capture for Aurora PostgreSQL is available exclusively in the Advanced mode of CloudWatch Database Insights. A query execution plan is a sequence of steps that database engines use to retrieve or modify data in a relational database management system (RDBMS). The RDBMS query optimizers may not always choose the most optimal execution plan from a set of alternative ways to execute a given query. Hence, database users sometimes need to manually examine and tune the plans to improve performance. This feature allows you to visualize multiple plans of a SQL query and compare them. It can help you determine if a change in performance of a SQL query is due to a different query execution plan within minutes. You can get started with this feature by enabling Database Insights Advanced mode on your Aurora PostgreSQL clusters using the RDS service console, AWS APIs, or the AWS SDK. CloudWatch Database Insights delivers database health monitoring aggregated at the fleet level, as well as instance-level dashboards for detailed database and SQL query analysis. CloudWatch Database Insights is available in all public AWS Regions and offers vCPU-based pricing – see the pricing page for details. For further information, visit the Database Insights documentation.  

On Jan 21, 2025 Amazon announced quarterly security and critical updates for Amazon Corretto Long-Term Supported (LTS) and Feature Release (FR) versions of OpenJDK. Corretto 23.0.2, 21.0.6, 17.0.14, 11.0.26, 8u442 are now available for download. Amazon Corretto is a no-cost, multi-platform, production-ready distribution of OpenJDK.

Click on the Corretto home page to download Corretto 8, Corretto 11, Corretto 17, Corretto 21, or Corretto 23. You can also get the updates on your Linux system by configuring a Corretto Apt or Yum repo.

Feedback is welcomed!
 

 

​On Jan 21, 2025 Amazon announced quarterly security and critical updates for Amazon Corretto Long-Term Supported (LTS) and Feature Release (FR) versions of OpenJDK. Corretto 23.0.2, 21.0.6, 17.0.14, 11.0.26, 8u442 are now available for download. Amazon Corretto is a no-cost, multi-platform, production-ready distribution of OpenJDK. Click on the Corretto home page to download Corretto 8, Corretto 11, Corretto 17, Corretto 21, or Corretto 23. You can also get the updates on your Linux system by configuring a Corretto Apt or Yum repo. Feedback is welcomed!    

Amazon Connect agent workspace now supports the ability to redirect audio from Citrix and Amazon WorkSpaces Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments to a customer service agent’s local device. Audio redirection improves voice quality and reduces latency for voice calls handled on virtual desktops, providing a better experience for both end customers and agents.

For region availability, please see the availability of Amazon Connect features by Region. To learn more and get started, visit the Amazon Connect agent workspace webpage or see the help documentation.

 

​Amazon Connect agent workspace now supports the ability to redirect audio from Citrix and Amazon WorkSpaces Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments to a customer service agent’s local device. Audio redirection improves voice quality and reduces latency for voice calls handled on virtual desktops, providing a better experience for both end customers and agents. For region availability, please see the availability of Amazon Connect features by Region. To learn more and get started, visit the Amazon Connect agent workspace webpage or see the help documentation.  

Today, we are announcing the availability of AWS Backup in the Mexico (Central) Region. AWS Backup is a fully-managed, policy-driven service that allows you to centrally automate data protection across multiple AWS services spanning compute, storage, and databases. Using AWS Backup, you can centrally create and manage backups of your application data, protect your data from inadvertent or malicious actions with immutable recovery points and vaults, and restore your data in the event of a data loss incident.

You can get started with AWS Backup using the AWS Backup console, SDKs, or CLI by creating a data protection policy and then assigning AWS resources to it using tags or Resource IDs. For more information on the features available in the Mexico (Central) Region, visit the AWS Backup product page and documentation. To learn about the Regional availability of AWS Backup, see the AWS Regional Services List.

 

​Today, we are announcing the availability of AWS Backup in the Mexico (Central) Region. AWS Backup is a fully-managed, policy-driven service that allows you to centrally automate data protection across multiple AWS services spanning compute, storage, and databases. Using AWS Backup, you can centrally create and manage backups of your application data, protect your data from inadvertent or malicious actions with immutable recovery points and vaults, and restore your data in the event of a data loss incident. You can get started with AWS Backup using the AWS Backup console, SDKs, or CLI by creating a data protection policy and then assigning AWS resources to it using tags or Resource IDs. For more information on the features available in the Mexico (Central) Region, visit the AWS Backup product page and documentation. To learn about the Regional availability of AWS Backup, see the AWS Regional Services List.  

Today, Amazon Redshift announced the launch of three new SQL features for zero-ETL integrations: QUERY_ALL_STATES, TRUNCATECOLUMNS, and ACCEPTINVCHARS. Zero-ETL integrations enable you to break down data silos in your organization and run timely analytics and machine learning (ML) on the data from your databases. With the launch of these new features, Amazon Redshift further enhances the functionality and reliability of zero-ETL integrations, allowing customers to work more efficiently with their data while maintaining data integrity.

The new SQL features provide significant benefits and further enhance the experience of using zero-ETL integrations. QUERY_ALL_STATES allows you to query tables in all states, including during updates, ensuring continuous data availability. TRUNCATECOLUMNS automatically truncates VARCHAR data that exceeds Amazon Redshift’s length limit, preventing replication errors and ensuring smoother data ingestion. ACCEPTINVCHARS enables you to replace invalid UTF-8 characters with a specified character of your choice, which is particularly useful when dealing with data from various sources that may contain non-standard characters. You can modify the existing integrations or create new ones using these features.

To learn more and get started with zero-ETL integration, visit the getting started guides for Amazon Redshift. To learn more about these features, see the documentation.
 

 

​Today, Amazon Redshift announced the launch of three new SQL features for zero-ETL integrations: QUERY_ALL_STATES, TRUNCATECOLUMNS, and ACCEPTINVCHARS. Zero-ETL integrations enable you to break down data silos in your organization and run timely analytics and machine learning (ML) on the data from your databases. With the launch of these new features, Amazon Redshift further enhances the functionality and reliability of zero-ETL integrations, allowing customers to work more efficiently with their data while maintaining data integrity. The new SQL features provide significant benefits and further enhance the experience of using zero-ETL integrations. QUERY_ALL_STATES allows you to query tables in all states, including during updates, ensuring continuous data availability. TRUNCATECOLUMNS automatically truncates VARCHAR data that exceeds Amazon Redshift’s length limit, preventing replication errors and ensuring smoother data ingestion. ACCEPTINVCHARS enables you to replace invalid UTF-8 characters with a specified character of your choice, which is particularly useful when dealing with data from various sources that may contain non-standard characters. You can modify the existing integrations or create new ones using these features. To learn more and get started with zero-ETL integration, visit the getting started guides for Amazon Redshift. To learn more about these features, see the documentation.    

Amazon EventBridge Event Bus now allows you to deliver events directly to AWS services in another account. This feature enables you to use multiple accounts to improve security and streamline business processes while reducing the overall cost and complexity of your architecture.

Amazon EventBridge Event Bus is a serverless event broker that enables you to create scalable event-driven applications by routing events between your own applications, third-party SaaS applications, and other AWS services. This launch allows you to directly target services in another account, without the need for additional infrastructure such as an intermediary EventBridge Event Bus or Lambda function, simplifying your architecture and reducing cost. For example, you can now route events from your EventBridge Event Bus directly to a different team’s SQS queue in a different account. The team receiving events does not need to learn about or maintain EventBridge resources and simply needs to grant IAM permissions to provide access to the queue. Events can be delivered cross-account to EventBridge targets that support resource-based IAM policies such as Amazon SQS, AWS Lambda, Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, Amazon SNS, and Amazon API Gateway.

Direct delivery to cross-account targets is now available in all commercial AWS Regions. To learn more, please read our blog post or visit our documentation. Pricing information is available on the EventBridge pricing page.

 

​Amazon EventBridge Event Bus now allows you to deliver events directly to AWS services in another account. This feature enables you to use multiple accounts to improve security and streamline business processes while reducing the overall cost and complexity of your architecture. Amazon EventBridge Event Bus is a serverless event broker that enables you to create scalable event-driven applications by routing events between your own applications, third-party SaaS applications, and other AWS services. This launch allows you to directly target services in another account, without the need for additional infrastructure such as an intermediary EventBridge Event Bus or Lambda function, simplifying your architecture and reducing cost. For example, you can now route events from your EventBridge Event Bus directly to a different team’s SQS queue in a different account. The team receiving events does not need to learn about or maintain EventBridge resources and simply needs to grant IAM permissions to provide access to the queue. Events can be delivered cross-account to EventBridge targets that support resource-based IAM policies such as Amazon SQS, AWS Lambda, Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, Amazon SNS, and Amazon API Gateway. Direct delivery to cross-account targets is now available in all commercial AWS Regions. To learn more, please read our blog post or visit our documentation. Pricing information is available on the EventBridge pricing page.