Introducing Today's Project!
What is Amazon Aurora?
Amazon Aurora is a fully managed relational database service from AWS that is compatible with MySQL. It is useful because it combines the familiarity of MySQL with the scalability, speed, and reliability of a cloud‑native service. Aurora
automatically handles tasks like backups, replication, and failover, which makes it easier to build web apps that need secure, high‑performance data storage without managing complex infrastructure yourself.
How I used Amazon Aurora in this project
In today’s project, I used Amazon Aurora to store and manage the data from my web app. By connecting my EC2‑hosted application to Aurora, I was able to capture user input through the web interface and save it securely in a relational
database. Aurora’s compatibility with MySQL made it easy to query and verify the data using the MySQL CLI, while its scalability and reliability ensured that the app could handle future growth without me having to manage complex infrastructure.
One thing I didn’t expect in this project was how quickly Amazon Aurora connected with my EC2 instance once the configuration details were set. I thought it might take longer or require a more complex setup, but the compatibility with MySQL and the php‑mysqli extension made the process smoother than I anticipated.
This showed me that cloud services can simplify tasks that would normally be more complicated to manage on my own.
Creating a Web App
To connect to my EC2 instance, I used SSH with my .pem key file because this provides secure, authenticated access to the server. By running the "ssh -i MavenAuroraApp.pem ec2-user@" command, I was able to log in remotely, and I'm ready to begin installing and configuring my web application.
To help me create my web app, I first connected to my EC2 instance through SSH and installed the necessary software, Apache, PHP, and the php‑mysqli extension, because these tools turn the EC2 instance into a functioning web server capable of running a dynamic application and communicating with my Aurora database.
Connecting my Web App to Aurora
I set up my EC2 instance's connection details to my database.
My Web App Upgrade
Next, I upgraded my web app by adding a new PHP script that connects to my Aurora database and displays a more user‑friendly web page. This upgrade allowed the app to move beyond a simple static page and start handling dynamic data, capturing user input, sending queries to Aurora, and showing results directly in the browser.
Testing my Web App
To make sure my web app was working correctly, I tested it in the browser by submitting data through the web page and then used the MySQL CLI on my EC2 instance to query the Aurora database. By checking that the new entries appeared in the database, I confirmed that the app was successfully sending and storing data in Aurora.
🤝Next in the series builds on this, which is "Load Data into DynamoDB"
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