Problem Analysis:

The company uses DynamoDB for gaming data storage and needs to ingest data into Amazon OpenSearch Service in near real time.

Data updates must propagate quickly to OpenSearch for analytics or search purposes.

Key Considerations:

DynamoDB Streams provide near-real-time capture of table changes (inserts, updates, and deletes).

Integration with AWS Lambda allows seamless processing of these changes.

OpenSearch offers APIs for indexing and updating documents, which Lambda can invoke.

Solution Analysis:

Option A: Step Functions with Periodic Export

Not suitable for near-real-time updates; introduces significant latency.

Operationally complex to manage periodic exports and S3 data ingestion.

Option B: AWS Glue Job

AWS Glue is designed for ETL workloads but lacks real-time processing capabilities.

Option C: DynamoDB Streams + Lambda

DynamoDB Streams capture changes in near real time.

Lambda can process these streams and use the OpenSearch API to update the index.

This approach provides low latency and seamless integration with minimal operational overhead.

Option D: Custom OpenSearch Plugin

Writing a custom plugin adds complexity and is unnecessary with existing AWS integrations.

Implementation Steps:

Enable DynamoDB Streams for the relevant DynamoDB tables.

Create a Lambda function to process stream records:

Parse insert, update, and delete events.

Use OpenSearch APIs to index or update documents based on the event type.

Set up a trigger to invoke the Lambda function whenever there are changes in the DynamoDB Stream.

Monitor and log errors for debugging and operational health.

Amazon DynamoDB Streams Documentation

AWS Lambda and DynamoDB Integration

Amazon OpenSearch Service APIs