I just read this great paper describing the architecture and implementation details of Amazon’s Dynamo system, the distributed fault-tolerant storage architecture that drives Amazon’s computing system. The paper’s author, Dr. Werner Vogels, is Amazon’s CTO and thus is clearly an excellent authority on the subject.

I just learned about Amazon’s new Simple Storage System, or S3. Amazon are clearly getting serious about hosting key tech plumbing, having already offered its simple queuing service and Mechanical Turk, which I expected to be much more popular than it is.

Afaik, the approach Amazon are taking with S3 is somewhat unique. They are providing a simple REST and SOAP API, built around a lightweight object idiom, where an object is identified by a developer-defined key, and consists of one byte to five gigabytes of data. Access is via HTTP/1.1 and Bittorrent. Object access control is user-based, or can be made public.

As a follow-up to my Software Engineering Canon, I’ve completed an initial version of my .NET Programming Canon. I’m sorry to say the field is considerably less distinguished, and I can honestly say my life has not been changed by any .NET book I’ve yet read, however you can’t pick up .NET from ‘The Pragmatic Programmer’, so I had to pick something.

I’ve just published an Amazon list, Software Engineering Canon, which represent what I believe to be the core printed works which define the software engineering discipline. These are books which have shaped my practice of software development in significant ways, and whose principles must be understood if one is to become a masterful software engineer.

I put this list together in anticipation of my deployment to Iraq, as once there I will be charged with guiding some Iraqi developers into the practice of modern software engineering.