DynamoDbExportCsv

A simple library / CLI tool for exporting a dynamodb table to a CSV file. CSV file can be written to local file system or streamed to S3.

Features

• Write to local file system
• Stream to S3
• DynamoDb parallel scans to utilize provisioned throughput
• Multiple child processes to maximize usage of multiple cores

Installation

CLI tool

  $ [sudo] npm install dynamodbexportcsv -g

Library

  $ npm install dynamodbexportcsv --save

Usage

CLI tool

  $ ./bin/DynamoDBExportCSV --awsregion "us-west-2" --awsid "<id>" --awssecret "<secret>" --table "<mytable>" --columns "<columna,columnb,columnc>" --gzip

Library

var csvExport = require('DynamoDbExportCsv');
var exporter = new csvExport('<accessKey>', '<secretKey>', '<awsRegion>');

exporter.exportTable('<tableName>', ['columna','columnb'], 4, true, 250, null, null, function(err) {
  console.info('Done');
});

This will create a sub directory in the current working directory with the same name as the table. It will use a parallel scan to create 4 files simultaneously and create a new file every 250MB. The csv files will be compressed with gzip.

Parallel Scans are useful to maximize usage of throughput provisioned on the DynamoDb table.

Documentation

new DynamoDbExportToCSV(awsAccessKeyId, awsSecretAccessKey, awsRegion)

Sets up the AWS credentials to use

Arguments

• awsAccessKeyId - AWS access key
• awsSecretAccessKey - AWS secret
• awsRegion - AWS region

exportTable(table, columns, totalSegments, compressed, filesize, s3Bucket, s3Path, callback)

Exports the specified columns in the dynamodb table to one or more files. This method will spawn multiple child processes for each parallel scan. This allows it to maximize performance by utilizing multiple cores.

Arguments

• table - Name of dynamodb table
• columns - Array of column names. Dynamodb has no way to query the table and determine columns without scanning the entire table. Only columns specified here are exported. Columns do not have to be present on every record.
• totalSegments - Number of parallel scans to run. The dynamodb table key space is split into this many segments and reads are done in parallel across these segments. This spreads the query load across the key space and allows higher read throughput. One file is created per segment at a minimum.
• compressed - When set to true files are output in compressed gzip format
• filesize - Maximum size of each file in megabytes. Once file hits this size it is closed and a new file created
• s3Bucket - Optional. If specified the files are streamed to s3 instead of the local file system.
• s3Path - Optional. Key prefix for files in s3. Used as a prefix with sequential numbers appended for each file created
• callback(err) - A callback which is executed when finished and includes any errors that occurred

exportTableWorker(table, columns, totalSegments, segment, compressed, filesize, s3Bucket, s3Path, callback)

Exports one slice of a dynamodb table. Used when running parallel scans. If you use exportTable there is no reason to use this. You might want to use it to break up a scan into chunks perhaps across machines and manually break up what exportTable already does for you.

Arguments

• table - Name of dynamodb table
• columns - Array of column names. Dynamodb has no way to query the table and determine columns without scanning the entire table. Only columns specified here are exported. Columns do not have to be present on every record.
• totalSegments - Number of parallel scans to run. The dynamodb table key space is split into this many segments and reads are done in parallel across these segments. This spreads the query load across the key space and allows higher read throughput. One file is created per segment at a minimum.
• 'segment' - The index of the parallel scan
• compressed - When set to true files are output in compressed gzip format
• filesize - Maximum size of each file in megabytes. Once file hits this size it is closed and a new file created
• s3Bucket - Optional. If specified the files are streamed to s3 instead of the local file system.
• s3Path - Optional. Key prefix for files in s3. Used as a prefix with sequential numbers appended for each file created
• callback(err) - A callback which is executed when finished and includes any errors that occurred

Performance

With the last update I ran a few performance comparisons while improving performance. These were not rigorously isolated, repeatable performance comparisons. All tests were run against a DynamoDb table scaled to 5000 read IOPS. The table contained 187,363,510 rows and was 98GB in size. All tests wrote the resulting CSV files to S3.

Instance Size	Scans	Execution Time	CPU	IOPS
c4.4xlarge	10	120 m	45%	1450
c4.4xlarge	20	86 m	90%	2500
c4.8xlarge	20	45 m	42%	4500
c4.8xlarge	30	36 m	67%	5500

Release Notes

• 0.2.7 - Fixed issues with column.split and improved stream drain behavior
• 0.2.4 - Added support for boolean column types

People

The author is Chris Kinsman from PushSpring

License

MIT