Amazon web services(EC2) for Android Application

Question

I have an android application for taking feedback from the users. I also have an Amazon EC2 account where I want to use Amazon Dynamo DB for storing my data.

I got Amazon SDK and all the required files for connecting my application with Amazon web Services.

But, I am using AWS for Android Application for the first time, I just want to know, do I need to create a Linux Instance(Virtual Server) for connecting my application with Dynamo DB, and do I need to write Server Side Scripts for accessing my Dynamo DB database for my application.

I just want to know the usage of Linux Instance, how to make it work. I will stick to AWS.

Answer 1

EC2 stands for Elastic Compute Cloud, a service which provides virtual machines. EC2 is one of many services offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Your question seems to use "EC2" and "AWS" interchangeably, which makes it confusing. For example you don't have an "EC2 account" you have an AWS account. You also have your question tagged with aws-lambda but you don't mention Lambda at all in your question, which is also confusing.

There is nothing stopping you from using DynamoDB directly via the AWS SDK inside your Android application. You could also configure an AWS API Gateway proxy that would sit between your Android app and the DynamoDB database, which would provide caching and an extra layer of security. You could also use AWS Lambda along with API Gateway to build a custom API on top of your DynamoDB tables which your Android application could consume.

You could build a web service that exposes your DynamoDB data as an API, and deploy that in a more traditional web server platform running on an EC2 instance if you wanted. However if all you are trying to do is expose DynamoDB to your Android application, using EC2 would be unneeded and an unnecessary expense.