CODEWITHSUNDEEP
amazon-dynamodbamazon-dynamodb-index
Jon Colverson
Jon Colverson

Reputation: 3066

Is it sensible to create unused generic local secondary indexes on my DynamoDB tables in case I need them later?

I currently have a need to add a local secondary index to a DynamoDB table but I see that they can't be added after the table is created. It's fine for me to re-create the table now while my project is in development, but it would be painful to do that later if I need another index when the project is publicly deployed.

That's made me wonder whether it would be sensible to re-create the table with the maximum number of secondary indexes allowed even though I don't need them now. The indexes would have generically-named attributes that I am not currently using as their sort keys. That way, if I ever need another local secondary index on this table in the future, I could just bring one of the unused ones into service.

I don't think it would be waste of storage or a performance problem because I understand that the indexes will only be written to when an item is written that includes the attribute that they index on.

I Googled to see if this idea was a common practice, but haven't found anyone talking about it. Is there some reason why this wouldn't be a good idea?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 146

Answers (1)

hunterhacker
hunterhacker

Reputation: 7132

Don’t do that. If a table has any LSIs it follows different rules and cannot grow an item collection beyond 10 GB or isolate hot items within an item collection. Why incur these downsides if you don’t need to? Plus later you can always create a GSI instead of an LSI.

Upvotes: 4

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