Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Using the Query API

The following sections briefly discuss the parameters and request authentication used with the Query API.

For general information about how the Query API works, see Query requests in the Amazon EC2 API Reference.

Query parameters

HTTP Query-based requests are HTTP requests that use the HTTP verb GET or POST and a Query parameter named Action.

Each Query request must include some common parameters to handle authentication and selection of an action.

Some operations take lists of parameters. These lists are specified using the param.n notation. Values of n are integers starting from 1.

For information about Amazon RDS Regions and endpoints, go to Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) in the Regions and Endpoints section of the Amazon Web Services General Reference.

Query request authentication

You can only send Query requests over HTTPS, and you must include a signature in every Query request. You must use either Amazon signature version 4 or signature version 2. For more information, see Signature Version 4 signing process and Signature version 2 signing process.