Chapter 7: AWS Application Services
Study Guide & Visual Reference for SAA-C03
1. Front-End Web & Mobile Offerings
Tools designed to simplify UI development, testing, and user engagement.
Full-stack development platform. CLI for backend setup, Hosting for global reach, and DataStore for sync.
The “Front Door” for APIs. Handles REST/WebSocket, security (IAM/Cognito), and throttling.
Cloud testing lab. Run apps on physical devices (not emulators) to ensure compatibility.
Multi-channel messaging (Email, SMS, Push). Used for user segmentation and engagement tracking.
2. Application Integration (The Invisible Pathways)
Services that allow independent components to communicate, enabling Decoupling.
SQS: Message Queuing Concepts
- Visibility Timeout: Time a message is hidden after a consumer picks it up to prevent double-processing.
- Dead-Letter Queue (DLQ): Where failed messages go for debugging.
- Standard vs FIFO: Standard offers best-effort ordering; FIFO guarantees Exactly-Once processing and strict order.
Service Comparison: SQS vs SNS vs SES
| Feature | AWS SQS | AWS SNS | AWS SES |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Pull-based (Queue) | Push-based (Pub/Sub) | Email Service |
| Primary Use | Decoupling services | Fan-out notifications | Bulk/Transactional Email |
| Ordering | Supported (FIFO) | No built-in ordering | N/A |
| Retention | Up to 14 Days | No retention | N/A |
Streaming & Workflows
Visual workflows for microservices. Uses state machines to coordinate complex tasks.
Real-time data streaming. Firehose for delivery to S3/Redshift; Analytics for SQL-based stream analysis.
Managed broker for ActiveMQ/RabbitMQ. Best for migrating existing apps using these protocols.
3. Machine Learning Services
AWS provides “AI Services” that require no ML expertise to use via APIs.
| Service | Function (The “What is it?”) |
|---|---|
| Comprehend | Natural Language Processing (NLP) – finds sentiment/entities in text. |
| Rekognition | Computer Vision – identifies objects, faces, and text in images/video. |
| Polly | Text-to-Speech – turns text into lifelike spoken audio. |
| Transcribe | Speech-to-Text – converts spoken audio into written text. |
| Lex | Conversational AI – the engine behind chatbots (Alexa technology). |
| SageMaker | The platform for data scientists to build, train, and deploy custom models. |
| Textract | OCR++ – Extracts text AND structured data (tables/forms) from docs. |
| Kendra | Intelligent enterprise search powered by ML. |
4. AWS Migration Services
Strategies and tools for moving on-premises workloads to the cloud.
The 7Rs of Migration Strategy
Key Migration Tools
Database Migration Service. Supports homogeneous and heterogeneous migrations with minimal downtime.
Fast data transfer between on-prem storage (NFS/SMB) and AWS (S3/EFS).
Physical devices (Snowcone, Snowball, Snowmobile) for petabyte-scale data transport where internet is slow.
Central dashboard to track the progress of your entire migration portfolio.