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Global tables: How it works

The following sections help you understand the concepts and behavior of global tables in Amazon DynamoDB.

Global table concepts

A global table is a collection of one or more replica tables, all owned by a single Amazon account.

A replica table (or replica, for short) is a single DynamoDB table that functions as a part of a global table. Each replica stores the same set of data items. Any given global table can only have one replica table per Amazon Region. For more information about how to get started with global tables, see Tutorial: Creating a global table.

When you create a DynamoDB global table, it consists of multiple replica tables (one per Region) that DynamoDB treats as a single unit. Every replica has the same table name and the same primary key schema. When an application writes data to a replica table in one Region, DynamoDB propagates the write to the other replica tables in the other Amazon Regions automatically.

You can add replica tables to the global table so that it can be available in additional Regions.

Consistency and conflict resolution

Any changes made to any item in any replica table are replicated to all the other replicas within the same global table. In a global table, a newly written item is usually propagated to all replica tables within a second.

With a global table, each replica table stores the same set of data items. DynamoDB does not support partial replication of only some of the items.

An application can read and write data to any replica table. If your application only uses eventually consistent reads and only issues reads against one Amazon Region, it will work without any modification. However, if your application requires strongly consistent reads, it must perform all of its strongly consistent reads and writes in the same Region. DynamoDB does not support strongly consistent reads across Regions. Therefore, if you write to one Region and read from another Region, the read response might include stale data that doesn't reflect the results of recently completed writes in the other Region.

If applications update the same item in different Regions at about the same time, conflicts can arise. To help ensure eventual consistency, DynamoDB global tables use a last writer wins reconciliation between concurrent updates, in which DynamoDB makes a best effort to determine the last writer. With this conflict resolution mechanism, all the replicas will agree on the latest update and converge toward a state in which they all have identical data.

Availability and durability

If a single Amazon Region becomes isolated or degraded, your application can redirect to a different Region and perform reads and writes against a different replica table. You can apply custom business logic to determine when to redirect requests to other Regions.

If a Region becomes isolated or degraded, DynamoDB keeps track of any writes that have been performed but have not yet been propagated to all of the replica tables. When the Region comes back online, DynamoDB resumes propagating any pending writes from that Region to the replica tables in other Regions. It also resumes propagating writes from other replica tables to the Region that is now back online.