Really trying to work through the labs in the AWS re:Start graduate environment to move onto focusing on programming and some more complex bits on Udemy. Not to also mention, lots of the labs aren't working because of silly things like IAM permissions going awry, so just stuff like I'm not given permission to view objects in the S3 bucket - real shame. This lab involved creating an REST API with mock endpoints. I feel like this should have come prior to another lab I've done this plus connecting the API endpoints to an DB, but nevertheless it has helped me solidify my API understanding once again.  It also gave me again exposure to AWS SDK for Python aka Boto3, which I'm starting to see is the core underpinning of how automated and serverless architecture is built in AWS. I am starting to feel really excited because the dots of everything I've learnt is starting to genuinely compound into some serious knowledge. It feels a little bit like learning to drive basicall...

Another day, some more hands-on labs! So this one is pretty fun, we are simply introducing Lambda functions to trigger with our API calls, AKA some serverless infrastructure, again for the benefit of being loosely coupled and highly available. From the above to the below diagram, you see we're introducing two Lambda functions to resolve the API functions (or basically queries in this instance). Though, serverless infrastructure mentioned, this architecture can also be categorised as a dynamic website more broadly too. The severless element references to how the backend is designed ultimately.  So, using a wrapper in the AWS SDK, the script uploads the intended Lambda to an S3 bucket and by the end of the project we have both lambda functions created and present alongside the API, as the image below demonstrates; Here we're able to see how the DynamoDB reflect what is exhibited on the e-commerce website; Great, but now let's having a little look into the actual code. Now the...

  So I mentioned that the new few labs were going to be topology bits. One lab environment didn't go smoothly (regular occurrence even during the instructor led days), so I went onto the next lab. After doing some Terraform, using the console is just a horribly slow, boring and ineffective way of getting infrastructure up in AWS. Nevertheless, I just did it as I want to exhaust everything in this AWS re/Start graduate environment and just move on.   Here I am pinging my bastion host, yawn, now hopefully onto something more interesting! Lambda! So the purpose of this lab is simply to add the Lambda functions, S3 bucket and set-up the SNS topic in short. I like these as for me, it's further exposure to the concept of serverless infrastructure, but it also provides some greater scope in understanding how I can leverage these tools for application purposes.  In this example the application backend is already in place within the lab. But we can see the application backend...