In simple terms, the shared responsibility model refers to the splitting of the responsibility of maintaining the model’s security between AWS and its customers. In the following article, we will explore the concept of shared responsibility in AWS before proceeding to discuss the security best practices followed in Amazon QuickSight. So, jump right into this article and get started with learning more about security in Amazon’s AWS QuickSight and its best practices.

What is AWS’s Shared Responsibility Model About?

In the shared responsibility model, both AWS and customers take responsibility for the security and maintenance of the cloud. To be specific, AWS takes responsibility for maintaining the security of the cloud services including the security of the data centers and securing global networking used by AWS services like QuickSight. On the other hand, customers/users are responsible for maintaining the security of their cloud based resources which is related to items like ensuring your AWS users have the correct permissions and access controls.

What Are the Best Practices for Security in Amazon Quicksight?

Since one security aspect is taken care of by Amazon, you are only responsible for maintaining the other side, which makes the implementation of security protocols quite quick and easy. This section will guide you on QuickSight best practices to help you hold up to your side of the deal and ensure that your cloud-based applications are protected.

Data Encryption

Out of all the best practices for security in Amazon QuickSight, data encryption is the prime and the most important one. In simple terms, data encryption is a process that converts important data into a format that can only be decrypted by users or devices with a secret key. To better understand data encryption, we generally break it down into encryption and transit or encryption at rest.

• Data Encryption in Transit: Also known as encrypting data in motion, refers to the process of encrypting data when it is moving from one location to another. In the case of QuickSight, this can be data transferred from data sources like spark cluster and Aurora database. In some cases, it can also refer to the transfer of data from SPICE to user dashboards.
• Encryption at Rest: When data that is not actively moving and stored on a device/network is encrypted, the process is known as encryption at rest. When talking about QuickSight, this refers to the data that is stored by users within SPICE or data that is related to our cache and email reports.

When talking about data encryption and transit, users must note that QuickSight supports encryption for all data transfers but is not mandatory. While the majority of our data sources like Athena and Grid shift have SSL encryption enabled, in some database connections it is optional. So, when you are making data connections where the SSL encryption is optional, it is best practice to enable it.

This is because SSL encryption can help secure your data that is in transit and protect it from attacks. Note that AWS supports a few SSL encryptions, which is why it is important to check for compliance validation for Amazon QuickSight in the documentation.

The data at rest can be broken into SPICE data and non-SPICE data, which is why we will first discuss the best practices for security in Amazon QuickSight from the point-of-view of the SPICE data.

SPICE Data – Encryption at Rest

In the QuickSight standard edition, all data is securely stored but is not encrypted. We can compare it to the QuickSight Enterprise edition to understand the difference. In the Enterprise edition, users add data where the SPICE part is encrypted using block-level encryption along with AWS-managed keys. Hence, this is a built-in encryption layer that offers additional QuickSight data security, making it quite difficult and virtually impossible for anyone to access the stored data.

If you want more control over your encryption keys, integrating QuickSight with another AWS service, the AWS key management service, might be a wise decision. When you do so, you can ensure that in the case of security breaches or incidents (quite unlikely), users can revoke access and lock down all datasets in a simple click. Since both of these are great ways to increase the security within our account and satisfy regulatory requirements, they are some of the best practices for security in Amazon QuickSight.

AWS Secrets Manager

In this section, we will continue discussing data security in Amazon QuickSight, but with the help of another AWS service called the AWS Secrets Manager. This AWS service allows users to manage, retrieve, and even rotate their database credentials, API keys, and other types of secrets. The service also allows users to refer to these secrets from other applications and AWS services like QuickSight. In the case of QuickSight Enterprise, admin users can go into the system and grant read-only access to all secrets created within the Secrets Manager.

The benefit is that all author users who are trying to connect to a data source, can now simply refer to the secrets. This means that authors are not required to input their credentials. However, an important point to note is that this service will work only with the data source types that support credential based authentication, but not Jira and ServiceNow. 

Using the Secrets Manager is considered as one of the best practices for security in Amazon QuickSight because it means that businesses are not required to share database credentials with other teams. Since the service comes with secret rotation, users can be assured that their credentials are safe and protected. This is one of the major benefits of Amazon QuickSight, which is contributing to its high popularity.

Leveraging VPC Connections

One of the best practices for security in Amazon QuickSight is leveraging VPC connections, which refers to the fact that those with QuickSight Enterprise licenses can securely connect to data available in VPC (i.e. registered cluster or RDS database). It also allows users to securely connect with databases that might have been hosted on-premises by leveraging VPC connections with Direct Connect, virtual private networks, or even proxies.

Note that making connections via the VPC connection ensures that the data sources of users are not exposed to the public network and helps reduce security risks. Another great benefit is that when users use VPC connections, they can enjoy other benefits offered by these such as specifying which ports and IP addresses can access our resources. If you want to implement VPC connections and leverage their benefits, we recommend getting in touch with a QuickSight consulting agency.

Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication is undoubtedly one of the best practices for security in Amazon QuickSight and helps users keep their data safe. We recommend using secure passwords and changing them frequently to ensure that your data is safe from data breaches. Another tip is to avoid using duplicate passwords for multiple devices and applications, which will help you keep your data protected from breaches occurring even on the client side.

Set up multi-factor authentication (MFA) to add a security layer and ensure that your accounts cannot be accessed by unauthorized users. Although this might seem quite simple, it can boost and add to the overall AWS security in Amazon QuickSight. We recommend this security practice in Amazon QuickSight for all users, especially those with multiple team members and clients accessing AWS.

Access Management for Multiple AWS Accounts

A major benefit of AWS is the ability to create account groups and apply policies to each of them. This allows users to oversee the responsibilities and access offered to each group, making the organization, management, and tracking of data quite easy. Since it is highly unlikely that all team members or teams require the same level of access, this is highly feasible and is one of the best practices for security in Amazon QuickSight. In the Enterprise edition, users can also use QuickSight row-level security or RLS to implement this access management security layer.

Security Audit

Based on the shared responsibility model, the security of your database and services also lies with you. This is why regular security audits that allow users to monitor and test all applications on AWS are recommended. If you or your team are not aware of security audits of AWS services, we recommend you hire AWS QuickSight developers for the same.

Conclusion

AWS QuickSight offers a lot of built-in features to ensure that user databases and data are secure. You can also check out their multiple resources and follow the best practices for security in Amazon QuickSight mentioned above. In case you are unaware of Amazon QuickSight and are looking for help, we recommend connecting with a company offering AWS QuickSight development services and AWS Amplify Development Services.

The post A Guide to the Best Practices for Security in Amazon Quicksight appeared first on CMARIX Blog.

The next question is how do businesses handle such large amounts of data and analyze them to draw better conclusions? Well, this is where the concept of Business Intelligence (BI) comes in, and tools like Amazon QuickSight help. There are numerous benefits of Amazon QuickSight, which is why several companies prefer the tool over other ones available in the market.

Curious to know more about the benefits of Amazon QuickSight and whether it is a right fit for your business and data analysis needs or not? Check out the following article to learn more about the platform, its working, benefits, costs, and why it is preferred over other tools.

What is Amazon QuickSight?

Before we directly jump into discussing the benefits of Amazon QuickSight, it is important that we get an overview of the platform. In this section, we will learn what Amazon QuickSight is about and look at a few of its features at a glance.

Amazon’s AWS (or Amazon Web Service) is one of the prominent names in the cloud computing industry and offers numerous cloud services that help businesses ensure seamless and efficient operations. They launched Amazon QuickSight, their powerful Business Intelligence tool in 2016 and took the world by storm. Although it is relatively new when compared to other BI tools, AWS QuickSight is quite powerful and worth considering.

Amazon QuickSight is powered by advanced technologies like machine learning and allows users to create data visualizations and dashboards irrespective of their location. The best part about the tool is that it allows users to connect data from several different sources and provides user-management tools that add to the system’s scalability.

Amazon QuickSight At A Glance

• Completely managed BI tool that is also cloud-scaled
• Allows creation of data visualizations and dashboards for users of businesses
• Seamlessly connects to many different sources
• Offers user-management tools that allow users to easily manage and scale systems
• Has an in-memory engine called SPICE that allows quick data retrieval
• With a low pricing plan, the software requires lesser per-user investment
• Offers an easy-to-use interface that quickly creates data analysis, data visualization, and dashboards

How Does Amazon QuickSight Work? – An Introduction To SPICE

In the above section where we looked at Amazon QuickSight at a glance, we mentioned the term SPICE. Here, we will discuss what SPICE is and how it brings about numerous benefits of AWS QuickSight that have led to its popularity.

QuickSight’s in-memory engine is called SPICE, which is an acronym for “super-fast parallel in-memory calculation engine”. In layman’s terms, it means that all the data used to make the visualizations are stored in memory, making the retrieval process fast and seamless. After all, it eliminates the need for the user to query the original data source each time and helps speed up all calculations taking place.

Benefits of Amazon QuickSight That Make It The Perfect Choice

Now that you have a brief overview of Amazon QuickSight and how it works, let us discuss the advantages of using Amazon QuickSight in detail. This will help you understand why the tool is worth it and the reason why so many companies are striving to utilize the platform’s capabilities and functionalities.

1. Highly Compatible with Different Types of Data

AWS QuickSight supports data from numerous data sources which means that it is a one-stop BI solution. Other than having the capability to access any data available on the internet, Amazon QuickSight is capable of accessing data even from a CSV (data present is separated by a comma) file. Amazon Quicksight also has great support for AWS data sources like S3, Aurora, RDS, and DynamoDB, making it the perfect BI tool for an AWS QuickSight business that also utilizes other AWS services.

2. High-Performance SPICE Engine

We have already discussed Amazon QuickSight’s SPICE engine, but we have not discussed the benefits of Amazon Quicksight that arise from it. These include:-

• Speeding up all data calculations and operations
• Parallel processing enables quick calculation of advanced equations and calculations
• Quick fetching of data to ensure that all operations are performed as soon as possible

3. Increased Accessibility

A great feature of AWS QuickSight is that it is compatible with a large number of devices which makes it all the more convenient. It also has a dedicated mobile app that allows users to access all dashboards irrespective of their location. With QuickSight, users can also embed their dashboards into their own locations which prove to be quite handy. This also benefits businesses that use a central admin panel to control their operations and is one of the reasons why a lot of them are looking for QuickSight consulting services.

4. Learning Curve

Compared to other BI tools in the industry, QuickSight is the easiest to pick up due to its simple and intuitive interface. Since Amazon QuickSight works on a serverless architecture, it is quite easy to set up and users can start using it as soon as possible. Another great benefit is that users do not need to worry about maintaining QuickSight’s servers, which adds to the overall benefits of Amazon QuickSight. The platform also has detailed documentation that outlines its different features and measures that help businesses get out of jams. If you do not have the time to read through the documentation and find solutions, we recommend you get in touch with a company offering AWS QuickSight and AWS Amplify development services.

5. Smart and Interactive Visualizations

Although QuickSight is new to the BI industry, it offers users access to numerous types of visualizations that they might need. Another great advantage is that AWS keeps working over the years to ensure users have access to new types of visualizations. One of the other benefits of Amazon QuickSight that has helped it rise to popularity is that all visualizations created using the tool are interactive. Amazon QuickSight’s SPICE engine has an ‘Auto Graph’ feature that suggests users the best type of visualization for the entered datasets.

6. Data Alerts

It is next to impossible for businesses to track day-to-day actions and other important metrics while managing important business operations. This also means that it is not possible for you to log in to your dashboard all the time whether via a web application, mobile app, or your own app. This is where Amazon QuickSight’s data alerts come in handy and notify users as soon as any particular threshold for KPIs is fulfilled. But, how does it bring about one of the top benefits of Amazon QuickSight that businesses are so fond of? Well, this is particularly useful if some important stock alerts drop or the number of orders your business receives is particularly low. So, these data alerts are particularly useful and help businesses continuously monitor their health.

7. Scalability

Since businesses from every domain can use Amazon QuickSight, it is important that it should be scalable. Well, QuickSight is scalable and allows businesses to cater to thousands of users who can work to access all data sources independently and simultaneously. Moreover, the real-time parallel usage of data sources ensures that the performance of the system is upheld.

8. Low Investment

Compared to all other BI tools available in the market, AWS QuickSight is available at a relatively cheaper price point. Amazon’s QuickSight is billed at a pay-per-session method (the first time in the industry) which helps ensure that users do not need to pay a fixed license fee and are charged on the number of sessions they use.

Why Amazon QuickSight Instead of Tableau and Power BI?

We have looked at the numerous benefits of Amazon QuickSight, but the real question is why you should consider it over other BI tools. Some reasons why AWS QuickSight might be the best BI tool for your business are as follows:-

• It works seamlessly with other AWS products meaning it is a great option for businesses utilizing AWS services.
• Due to the affordable pricing plan, AWS QuickSight is a great option for businesses with a limited budget for BI
• It is quite easy to set up which means that people can simply sign up and utilize it to make better business decisions

Conclusion

Although AWS QuickSight is new to the industry and is relatively new, it is quite powerful and can change the way businesses function. We hope the above article sheds light on the numerous benefits of Amazon QuickSight that can help you. Interested in taking a step towards making better business decisions by analyzing business data via Amazon QuickSight? Hire AWS QuickSight developers to set up your dashboards and get started with reaping the benefits of Amazon QuickSight for better business functioning.

The post Major Benefits of Amazon Quicksight – Reasons Why It Should Be Your Preferred BI Tool appeared first on CMARIX Blog.

As businesses need to scale over time, their data ecosystem must change accordingly. This not only allows better handling of applications, but also helps enterprises save costs, enhance scalability, and achieve reliability. Moreover, business applications change with time including the addition of new features or changes in existing functionalities. This is why businesses must invest in database migration along with custom software development.

To help you better understand the need for database migration along with its benefits, challenges, and points to help tackle them, we have created the detailed article below. So, what are you waiting for? Jump right into it to get started with learning more about database migration and investing in it as soon as possible.

What Is A Database Migration?

Although database migration is a complicated process that we will get into in detail in the following sections, it would be better to explain the core idea in simple terms.

The simple answer to “what is a database migration” is – it is the process of data transportation from one or more databases/platforms to another target database/platform. It is a multi-phase process that involves different actions like moving data, assessing schemas, understanding the different objects like tables and objects, testing functions and methods, performance tuning, and multiple other steps.

It is clear that database migration is quite complicated and requires a lot of effort. So, the obvious question is – what is the need for database migrations? To help you understand the need for this difficult process, we have answered this question in the following section.

What Is The Need For Database Migration?

As technology continues to advance and businesses need to handle more and more data, it is important that organizations adapt to new technologies. This is essential as new technologies are better capable of handling large numbers of users while helping boost the application’s performance and efficiency. Some reasons for database migration to help understand why it is the need of the hour are:-

1. Save Business Costs

Since old technologies operate slower than advanced upgrades, using old databases might take a lot of time. This means that simple business processes will take up a lot of time and your infrastructure resources will be kept in use for longer. So, other business processes will be on hold until the resources free up. When your developers perform database migration, they ensure that your business saves on infrastructure and manpower required to support the database. Ultimately, this helps reduce business costs while offering greater flexibility and scope for improvement.

2. Upgrade Infrastructure

One of the most common reasons for businesses looking for data migration is their need to shift to a new system. After all, outdated systems are not only difficult to maintain, but might also not fulfill the current business demands. Moreover, with the introduction of new technologies like big data, business systems must be capable of handling huge amounts of data and processing them for better results.

3. Reduce Redundancy

Often, companies realize that their data is not stored in a comprehensive manner which can cause problems in business functioning. This also means that different business teams do not have access to accurate data and cannot deliver transparent services. In these cases, database migration is essential and necessary to move the complete business data in a single place. Doing so also promotes collaboration and ensures that all business departments and teams are in sync.

4. Security Patches And Updates

Databases are one of the most vulnerable points of cyberattacks since most businesses forget to upgrade them with time. So, they are quite easy to get through and fail more than other systems. With database migration, businesses get access to professional database migration service that includes database upgrades with better security options. So, the only way to update your database and ensure that it is not a point for data leaks is via database migration and degradation.

What Happens During Database Migration?

Now that we know how database migrations came into existence and why they are needed, let us move on to discussing what the process actually entails.

Generation Of Granular Changes As Individual Scripted Files

Basically, database migrations track granular changes to the schema of the database and in some cases, changes made to the data too. Typically, these changes are listed and stored as separate schema files to enable the proper reflection of code changes via version control software. Another point to note is that these files are not only available as individual scripts, but you can also find the current schema of the database as its own file (also known as the schema file).

Tool-Dependent Database Migration Scripts

Popular web frameworks and migration tools can produce migration changes in multiple file formats like JSON and XML. This means that there is no standard that is followed when it comes to database migration and the creation of relevant files. But, you can also custom-write your database migration script in the form of SQL. However, a downside is that handwriting codes means that the process becomes time-consuming and there is a high potential of errors creeping into the code.

What Are The Benefits Of Database Migration?

Some common benefits of database migration that have helped boost its popularity include:-

1. Improvement In Performance

Since database migration means the inclusion of new and advanced technologies, the target databases generally offer improved performance due to the optimization of resources, hardware, and infrastructure. Moreover, database migration includes the optimization of database design and indexing strategies, segmentation and partition of data, and the proper utilization of advanced database features.

2. Cost Optimization

By migrating to cloud-based technologies, businesses can avoid major investments in resources, hardware, and infrastructure. Instead, they can leverage tools available on a pay-as-you-use basis. Moreover, cloud-based solutions offer effective storage and help ensure proper data maintenance for better business efficiency.

3. Additional Features And Functionalities

Since database migrations use advanced technologies, they allow businesses to better leverage additional features and functionalities. For example, new systems support new data types, implement data analytics, and have built-in support that ensures high availability.

4. Data Consolidation

Often, multiple databases exist within an organization’s infrastructure which can lead to improper data management and coordination. Migrating these into a single database via database migration can help simplify the complete data management process, reduce instances of duplicate data, enable better data integrity, and allow instant formation of in-depth reports.

5. Business Continuity And Disaster Recovery

With database migration, businesses can migrate their organizational data into secure systems and platforms. This helps minimize the risk of data loss and allows better recovery of data in case of issues. Moreover, cloud-based solutions offer better data availability that is not dependent on hardware and helps prevent system disruption due to hardware and system failures.

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What Are The Challenges In Database Migration?

Although database migration is gaining popularity now, it has been a common practice for years. The process is quite complicated which gives rise to some common challenges listed below. Following DB migration best practices can help avoid these issues as much as possible.

1. Data Loss

The most common issue that organizations face during database migration is the loss of data. To avoid this, it is crucial to test for data loss or data corruption in the planning stage to ensure that the complete data is migrated to the target database. Doing this early on will help ensure that you can solve these challenges when you are not deep in database migration.

2. Data Security

Since data is of utmost importance to a business’s performance and proper functioning, data security is crucial. Before you go through data migration, focus on data encryption to ensure that your data is not put at risk during the process.

3. Planning Difficulty

Most multinational companies have their data spread across multiple databases which also spread across different geographical areas. Before db migration, companies must locate these databases and plan how to convert their schemas to ensure proper data migration into the target database. Beware that the planning process before database migration can become quite complicated and time-consuming.

4. Migration Strategy

The most obvious question, when companies learn about database migration, is – how is the DB migration done? Due to this lack of knowledge, companies often miss out on several crucial steps and adopt a strategy that is not suitable for their company. This can cause problems like data storage and maintenance in the future and might lead to system failures.

How To Perform Database Migration (Steps)?

To help you better plan your database migration strategy, we have broken down the multi-step process into a few simple steps. Check out the steps listed below and get ready to migrate your data:-

1. Proper Understanding Of The Source Database

An important step in the database migration process is understanding the source data that needs to be migrated to the target database. Some common questions that you must be able to understand before you go through the DB migration process include:-

• What is the size of the data stored in the source database? – The scope of your db migration project is highly dependent on the size and complexity of the source data that is to be migrated. This will also help you understand the amount of computing resources and time required to migrate your data into the target database.
• Does the data set contain huge tables? – When your data consists of tables with millions of rows, the migration process becomes quite complicated. In these cases, it would be wise to use database migration tools.
• What are the different data types involved in the database migration process? – When you migrate your data between different databases, you will need to consider the schema of the databases and decide on the schema of your target database for successful data migration.

2. Data Assessment

This step refers to the granular assessment of data before businesses go through database migration. You must profile the source data present in the database and set data quality rules that help remove data inconsistencies, duplicate records, and incorrect information. Properly assessing your data and completing your data profile will help mitigate the risk of delays and help you avoid budget overruns.

3. Conversion Of Database Schema

Often, businesses need to perform heterogeneous data migrations, meaning migrating data between different database engines. This process is wildly different from single database migrations and can be quite complicated. Although you can manually convert schemas for DB migrations, it is quite time-consuming and can take up a lot of resources. This is why we recommend using data migration tools and services to aid the migration process and help you quickly perform it.

4. Migration Build Tests

Adopting an iterative process can help better implement and test a migration build. It is advisable to start with a small data subset, profile it, and convert the schema into a fully running migration exercise. Doing so will help ensure data mapping, transformations, and data quality rules work as you intended.

5. Execution Of The Migration

Since database migration takes time, companies must plan the execution of their migration projects during the downtime. It is important to better plan your database moving projects to ensure that your system does not run into issues, failures, and interruptions. After all, this can disrupt client services and affect the complete business process.

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Are There Any Database Migration Tools?

The top db migration tools that you can utilize for quicker data migration are:-

1. AWS Database Migration Services

AWS database migration services are one of the most popular migration suites offered by Amazon. The cloud data migration tool offers businesses hybrid data storage and online and offline data transfers. Moreover, they include a wide range of services that help users move datasets irrespective of the data type and schema.

2. Informix

Another excellent database migration tool, Informix has been developed by IBM and allows migration of data from one IBM database to another. This tool primarily focuses on homogenous data migrations and is suitable for relational systems. Moreover, the tool is a high-speed and flexible database that easily integrates with SQL, NoSQL, or JSON, and spatial data.

3. Azure Database Migration Services

Owned by Microsoft, Azure’s database migration tool allows users to simplify and automate the complete data migration process. With the help of this tool, users can easily migrate databases from SQL servers, MySQL database, PostgreSQL database, MongoDB, and Oracle to the Azure cloud.

Expedite Your Business’ Database Migration With CMARIX

Since database migration is quite complicated, it can be time-consuming and expensive. However, it is important to complete the DB migration process on time to ensure that the company’s revenue and reputation do not take a hit. With functional testing tools and enterprise-grade database migration tools, you can easily automate repetitive tasks and ensure better maintenance of data quality.

At CMARIX, we design end-to-end database migration solutions that cater to the complex needs of every business. Moreover, our team of experts has years of professional experience in the fields of data migration and maintenance. Interested in learning more and utilizing expert database migration services? Get in touch with us to discuss your goals or for a quick demo!

The post A Detailed Guide to Database Migration and Its Importance appeared first on CMARIX Blog.

At a time when automation technologies and bots are increasingly getting powerful to complete tasks and carry out responsibilities previously human beings used to deal with, the emergence of such a platform once again made the human role invincible and indomitable. Many tasks that companies needed to carry out by employing a temporary or freelance workforce, now can be completed by a talented workforce spread across the globe through a crowdsourcing model. Instead of delegating the whole task to one or a group of employees, this crowdsourcing platform basically breaks down the manual and time-consuming projects into a multitude of small as well as manual tasks or microtasks carried out by a distributed workforce.

Do you want to hire AWS developer for integrating the microservices to your website? Wait, first learn the intricacies to have a better understanding of the platform. Here through the rest of the post, we are going to explain the benefits of the platform, its key concepts, and the way it works.

Key Advantages of MTurk for Businesses

MTurk really revolutionises the way jobs are delegated to a remote workforce and are completed through the input of credible people you can only come into contact through a crowdsourcing platform. With this unique value proposition in mind, we are going to explain the key advantages of MTurk for businesses.

• Enhance Efficiency to the Maximum

Still, business processes and development projects need to rely heavily on manual tasks and many of these tasks are low-value repetitive tasks. Thanks to MTurk these manual tasks from the business workflows can be broken down into microtasks for a global workforce to take care of. When a business gets its jobs done through a crowdsourced workforce spread all over the globe without the challenges of management and handling resources, the companies enjoy optimum efficiency and output with no significant cost to bear.

• Flexible Job Handling

The best thing about the MTurk platform is that you can handle the workforce in a very flexible and scalable manner. Instead of hiring a committed workforce with higher overhead cost, through this platform, you can just employ a vast workforce that can be scaled up or down or delegated the tasks flexibly as per the evolving requirements.

• Getting Rid of the Cost of Hiring

One of the greatest advantages of the MTurk platform is the reduced cost of hiring. While hiring an in-house workforce involves bearing a great overhead cost, completing the tasks through a distributed workforce involves great cost benefits and flexibility. While you can achieve the best results by delegating your tasks in a distributed micro task format, you enjoy superior cost advantages for the jobs.

How MTurk Works? Explaining with Use Cases

Now that we have explained the key advantages of the MTurk crowdsourcing job marketplace, it is time to have a deeper understanding of the way the platform works and helps businesses complete their tasks. Let us tell here that MTurk crowdsourcing of jobs is suitable for a whole array of use cases and business contexts. Here we are going to explain the way MTurk works and how to get started on amazon mechanical turk.

To explain how MTurk works, we can take the example of Machine Learning projects. In the development of Machine Learning-based algorithms and solutions, collecting huge volumes of data for the purpose of training the machine learning models is a necessary task. This data collection task can be crowdsourced through MTurk. Similarly, the iterations and improvements that continue to happen with machine learning models can also be crowdsourced through MTurk micro-tasking.

A similar kind of micro-tasking through the MTurk platform can also be carried out in the case of AI-based development projects. As AI is increasingly getting sophisticated in respect of intelligent understanding of the contexts and its capabilities to respond to human situations, the next level of AI development involves training AI models and algorithms with more human-annotated data relevant to different contexts. This is where MTurk micro-tasking may help in creating new data sets by crowdsourcing data research and data inputs.

Many businesses now harness a big in-house workforce for their customer service, support, and other jobs that are crucial for retaining the user traction and brand value. Many businesses simply by outsourcing these processes and tasks make things easier for the companies to carry out similar tasks more efficiently and at less cost. Now we have another better alternative, we have an MTurk micro-tasking platform to crowdsource a multitude of tasks for customer service, support and various processes. For diverse business processes, this can bring a fresh breath of efficiency and productivity without adding to the cost.

Another crucial aspect that enterprises these days are increasingly focusing upon is data-driven marketing and customer outreach. Gathering consumer and user data across the niches and specialties no longer requires hiring marketing analytics or marketing survey teams. MTurk appears to be the most efficient platform for data sampling with a totally decentralised model of gathering data from users all over the world thanks to a large distributed workforce engaged with small bite-sized tasks.

Key Concepts of the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk)

Now that we have a gross understanding of the MTurk platform and the way it works in different contexts, it is important to get acquainted with certain terminologies and concepts pertaining to the platform. Here we explain these concepts in brief.

• Requester

The Requester refers to the individual, company, or organization, responsible for creating and submitting tasks to the MTurk platform for the distributed workforce to take care of the tasks and jobs. The Requester can integrate the MTurk with his website through APIs and can delegate and follow up with the tasks. The Requester can also use third-party software for summiting and following up with the tasks.

• Human Intelligence Task (HIT)

The Human Intelligence Task (HIT) refers to the task submitted by the Requester to the MTurk platform. A HIT comes as a single, self-referencing task involving no point of reference for other tasks. For example, a HIT can be “knowing the number of fuel stations in a route”.

These HITs are listed on the Amazon MTurk website. Now each of these tasks comes with a life cycle and a duration as mentioned by the Requester. The task is only available for the workers within that duration. In other words, the worker has to complete the task within that duration.

• Worker

The Worker refers to the person who takes a job or tasks requested by the Requester on the MTurk website. The workers find and choose their preferred tasks from the listed jobs on the MTurk website. As per the MTurk rule, each worker can get a single job at a given time.

• Assignment

The assignment is the number of people permitted to submit fully completed work every HIT. As soon as a worker accepts the task, the MTurk comes with an assignment for tracking the work until completion. Every assignment belongs to a specific worker and comes with the assurance that the worker can submit the completed work and get a reward till the time of expiry of the assignment.

• Reward

The reward refers to the remuneration paid by the Requester to the Workers against the satisfactory completion of the tasks.

Conclusion

MTurk has emerged with a revolutionary concept of crowdsourcing business processes and a variety of tasks across diverse workplace environments. The platform is likely to reinvent the efficiency of business processes across the spectrum.

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NoSQL( Not Only SQL) database provides a technique for data store and retrieves other than the tabular relations used in relational databases.NoSQL technology was used by such websites like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and others who required database management systems that could write and read data anywhere in the world, while scaling and delivering performance across massive data sets and millions of users.There are many NoSQL services, all with their own benefits and features. Amazon DynamoDB is one of the topmost NoSQL Database.

Amazon DynamoDB is the most prominent NoSQL cloud database provided by Amazon AWS Web Development Services. It is a completely managed NoSQL cloud database platform to store, process and access data to support high performance and scale-driven applications. Amazon DynamoDB is a fast and flexible NoSQL database service for all applications that need consistent, single-digit millisecond latency at any scale. It supports both document and key-value store models. Amazon DynamoDB has an ability to scale and have a flexible schema, which means users can easily change how data is structured and run multiple queries against it.

Modern web-based applications often face database scaling challenges with the growth of customers, data as well as an increase in traffic. With the help of Amazon DynamoDB NoSQL Database Service, developers scaling cloud-based applications can store data on Solid State Drives and reproduce it over various AWS accessibility zones for offering integrated accessibility and durability. Enterprises use DynamoDB to support a variety of use cases, including advertising campaigns, social media applications, tracking gaming information, collecting and analyzing log data, and online business.

Here Are Various Key Benefits That Helped Make Amazon Dynamodb into a Giant

• Scalability and Performance

Using Amazon DynamoDB, Developers can combine incremental scalability and high performance with the ease of cloud administration, reliability and table data model and thus can meet the customer demand. It can scale the table assets to a large number of servers on various Availability Zones for addressing storage need. In addition, there is no specific limit to the quantity of data that a table can store. As a result, any amount of data can be stored and retrieved and Dynamo DB shared data across more servers with the increase of data stored in a table.

• Cross-region Replication

It enables you to maintain identical copies as replicas of a DynamoDB master table in one or more AWS regions. Once you enable cross-region replication for a table, identical copies of the table are created in other AWS areas. Any mode of changes in the table will be consequently propagated to all replicas.

• TTL (Time to Live)

TTL is a process that gives you an opportunity to set a specific timestamp to delete expired data from your tables. Once the timestamp expires, the relating item is marked as expired and is subsequently deleted from the table. By using this functionality, you don’t need to track expired data and delete it manually. TTL can help you reduce storage usage and reduce the cost of storing data that is no longer important.

• Fine-grained Access Control

Fine-Grained Access Control gives a DynamoDB table owner a high level of control over data in the table. In particular, the table owner can specify who can access which data or attributes of the table and perform what actions such as read-write or update. Fine-Grained Access Control is used in combination with AWS Identity and Access Management, which manages the security credentials and the related permissions.

• Stream

Using the DynamoDB Streams, developers can update and receive the item-level data before and after data are changed. DynamoDB Streams provides a time-ordered sequence of data changes made in a table in the last 24 hours. You can access a stream with a simple API call and use it to keep other data stores updated with the latest changes and take actions based on it.

• Data Model

DynamoDB uses three essential data model units, Tables, Items, and Attributes. Tables are collections of Items, and Items are collections of Attributes. Attributes are basic elements of information, such as key-value pairs. In DynamoDB, tables do not have fixed schemas associated with them. An item in DynamoDB requires a Primary Key. If you want to find the exact data on the table than the Primary Key must be unique.

Amazon DynamoDB is a managed NoSQL service with strong consistency and predictable performance that shields users from the complexities of manual setup. Amazon DynamoDB maintains high performance and cost efficiency for every kind of Web application ranging from small or large. You can save users from the complexities of a distributed system with the strong consistency and predictable performance of DynamoDB. With a strong ecosystem, Amazon DynamoDB has become an always thought about the option when considering building your Web-based application.

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Amazon Cognito is an Amazon Web Service (AWS) product which controls the user authentication and user access for mobile applications over various devices. It is a service that makes it easy to save mobile user data, such as app preferences or game state, in the AWS Cloud without writing any backend code or managing any infrastructure that helps the developer to concentrate on writing code instead of building and managing the requisite back-end infrastructure. Amazon Cognito works with Social identity providers such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon as well as external identity providers that support SAML or OpenID Connect. Developers can use Amazon Cognito Identity to add sign-up and sign-in to their apps and to enable their users to securely access their application’s assets. Cognito also enables developers to synchronize data across multiple devices, platforms, and applications. For an example you built a gaming application with a few levels. Your end users is likely to get frustrated if they have to beat the same levels over & again, when they change to another device. To fix this, you need to synchronize different devices to the same level they are on using Amazon Cognito so they can continue where they left off.

Here Are Different Advantages of Amazon Cognito for Developer:

• User Pools

By using Amazon Cognito, User Pools developer can create and manage user directory and can add sign-up and sign-in to the user’s mobile application. User pools scale to millions of users and are designed to provide simple, secure, and low-cost options for developer. Developers can likewise implement improved security elements, such as email and phone number verification, and multi-factor authentication.

• OpenidConnect

OpenID Connect is an open standard for identity validation. You can now use Amazon Cognito to create unique identifiers and receive temporary AWS credentials with any OIDC-compatible provider. This feature significantly expands the universe of identity providers you can leverage with Amazon Cognito to securely access your AWS assets. It makes easier to follow security best practices at AWS by supporting for OIDC identity providers, along with developer authenticated identities.

• Push Synchronize

By using Amazon Cognito you can synchronize your data when it is changed in the cloud, to make your customers’ experience completely consistent across multiple devices. Amazon Cognito uses the Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) to send a push notification, and alert all the devices connected to a Cognito identity of a data change. This enables your application to synchronize the changes made in the cloud sync, without having to check store manually every time.

• Amazon Cognito Sync

Amazon Cognito Sync supports offline access and cross-device syncing of application-related user’s information. You can also use the Amazon Cognito Sync service to save profile information for a user and make it effortlessly accessible from all the platforms supported by your application.

• Federated Identities

Federated Identities enables the developer to make unique identities for their users and verify them with federated identity providers. With a federated identity, a developer can get temporary or limited-benefits using AWS credentials to synchronize the data with Amazon Cognito Sync. It supports federated identity providers such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, and OpenID Connect.

Secure user login is an important part of any mobile application. By using Amazon Cognito in your Mobile applications, you can use a consistent, cross-platform identifier for your end-users authentication. Amazon Cognito service is a user identity and data synchronization solution that helps to safely manage and synchronize application data for the users across their mobile devices. It enables synchronization of data across a user’s different devices so that their application experience remains consistent when they switch between devices or upgrade to a new device. Build up a mobile application incorporated with Amazon Cognito into your apps to provide a consistent experience for your end users by hiring Mobile app developers, experts can develop a backend infrastructure to manage your user’s data, authentication and states.

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