aws-databases

Amazon Aurora MySQL — creates, modifies, and advises on Aurora MySQL clusters specifically (MySQL-compatible engine, Aurora serverless, parallel query). Trigger for Aurora MySQL cluster operations, ACU sizing, I/O-Optimized storage, commitment pricing, or MySQL upgrade planning. Aurora MySQL uses full (VPC-based) configuration — express configuration is PostgreSQL-only. For Aurora PostgreSQL, use amazon-aurora-postgresql instead. Contains safety guardrails and response templates that override defaults.

Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL — creates, modifies, and advises on Aurora PostgreSQL clusters specifically (PostgreSQL-compatible engine, Aurora serverless, express configuration, pgvector, Babelfish). Trigger for Aurora PostgreSQL cluster operations, express-configuration quick-start, ACU sizing, I/O-Optimized storage, commitment pricing, or PostgreSQL upgrade planning. For Aurora MySQL, use amazon-aurora-mysql instead. Contains safety guardrails, express-first routing, and response templates that override defaults.

Manages Amazon DocumentDB end-to-end — serverless-on-8.0 cluster setup, TLS/VPC/driver config, flexible-schema and vector-search data modeling, MongoDB compatibility assessment, DMS-based migration, slow-query diagnosis, major version upgrades (4.0->5.0->8.0), Well-Architected reviews (41-check wa_review.py), cost estimation, and security hardening. Retrieve for every DocumentDB question and when the user asks to set up or migrate MongoDB to AWS — DocumentDB is AWS's MongoDB-compatible managed database. Triggers: JSON document store, document database, MongoDB on AWS, Nested fields, Lambda cannot connect, TLS handshake, VPC port 27017, IAM auth, Secrets Manager, encryption at rest, $graphLookup, flexible schema, COLLSCAN, compound index, DMS migration, CDC cutover, $vectorSearch, RAG, Global Clusters, DR replication, cost sizing, audit, health check, production-readiness.

Designs, reviews, and debugs DynamoDB data layers from design axioms — enumerates access patterns, chooses partition/sort keys and GSIs, decides single-table vs. multi-table, configures Streams, Global Tables, TTL, vector indexes for similarity search, and zero-ETL integrations to OpenSearch/Redshift/SageMaker Lakehouse, and produces a defensible data-layer design with a monthly cost estimate and optional live validation. Applies whenever a user is designing, reviewing, or refactoring anything backed by DynamoDB — schemas, access patterns, GSIs, single- vs. multi-table choices, Streams consumers, transactional outboxes, Global Tables, zero-ETL pipelines, or storing embeddings and running semantic/vector similarity search with SearchVectors on items already in DynamoDB — even when they don't say "axioms" or "design review." Also applies when debugging hot partitions, throttling, unbounded Scans, LWW conflicts, or surprise bills on DynamoDB workloads.

Activate when developers have latent caching needs: slow API responses, database read bottlenecks, DynamoDB throttling or cost, RDS/Aurora scaling pressure, Bedrock latency or cost, or adding a cache; activate when working with Redis, Valkey, Memcached, or any in-memory data store, cache-aside patterns, session stores, rate limiting, leaderboards, counters, streams, queues, pub/sub, distributed locks, feature flags, shopping carts, or other caching strategies. Activate for GenAI and ML retrieval: vector similarity search for low-latency retrieval, semantic caching, RAG, LLM response caching, embedding stores, AI agent memory, recommendation, personalization. Activate for ElastiCache lifecycle: provisioning (serverless or node-based), engine selection, CloudFormation/CDK/Terraform IaC, VPC connectivity, TLS, RBAC, IAM auth, Global Datastore, monitoring, troubleshooting, cost optimization, and migration from self-managed Redis. Do not trigger for browser caches, CDN/CloudFront, HTTP Cache-Control, CPU caches.

Provides authoritative compatibility checks, pricing estimates, connection troubleshooting, pre-warming guidance, and infrastructure mutations for Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra). Covers LWT/batch operations, secondary indexes, materialized views, capacity modes, TTL, PITR, CDC, auto-scaling, multi-region keyspaces, UDTs, nodetool diagnostics parsing, SQL-to-Cassandra migration, and Cassandra-to-Keyspaces migration scenarios. Agents frequently produce incomplete or incorrect answers about Keyspaces feature support without this skill loaded.

Provides authoritative guidance on Amazon Neptune Database and Neptune Analytics for graph, knowledge-graph, and relationship-heavy workloads — fraud detection / fraud rings, agentic memory / chatbot context across sessions, recommendations, identity resolution, Gremlin / openCypher / SPARQL queries, supernode / slow traversal, Neo4j to Neptune migration / APOC compatibility, Neptune Database vs Analytics engine selection, PageRank / community detection, GraphRAG, and connectivity from Lambda / EC2 / applications. Creates and modifies Neptune Database clusters/instances and Neptune Analytics graphs on explicit user confirmation; blocks destructive operations (delete, reset-graph, failover, major upgrade) and redirects to change-control.

Routes any task involving AWS databases — choosing, comparing, recommending, getting started with, or operating a database — to the correct service-specific skill. Supersedes general training-data knowledge with post-training service updates, corrected limitations, and decision procedures for relational (Aurora, DSQL, RDS), key-value (DynamoDB), wide-column (Keyspaces), document (DocumentDB), graph (Neptune), time-series (Timestream), and in-memory/caching (ElastiCache, MemoryDB) workloads. Activates when a user describes building an application on AWS that will store, retrieve, or manage data, even if they do not mention 'database' explicitly.

Creates a complete Amazon Aurora database cluster with instances, handling cluster creation, instance provisioning, and Secrets Manager password management in the proper sequence. Use when setting up new Aurora MySQL or PostgreSQL clusters with production-ready configuration.

Build with Aurora DSQL — manage schemas, execute queries, handle migrations, diagnose query plans, diagnose cluster performance, load data, and develop applications with a serverless, distributed SQL database. Covers IAM auth, multi-tenant patterns, MySQL-to-DSQL and PostgreSQL-to-DSQL schema conversion, foreign key constraints, OCC retry patterns, ORM migration (Django/EF Core/Hibernate/Rails/SQLAlchemy), DDL operations, query plan explainability, system diagnostics via CloudWatch AAS, SQL compatibility validation, and bulk data loading. Triggers on phrases like: DSQL, Aurora DSQL, distributed SQL database, serverless PostgreSQL-compatible database, migrate to DSQL, DSQL query plan, DSQL EXPLAIN ANALYZE, DSQL ENUM, DSQL foreign key, DSQL OCC retry, DSQL multi-region, DSQL JSONB, DSQL GIN index, load into DSQL, load CSV into DSQL, bulk load DSQL, aurora-dsql-loader, DSQL slow, DSQL performance, DSQL wait events, DSQL AAS.

Exports Amazon RDS or Aurora database snapshots to Amazon S3 in Apache Parquet format for analytics, backup, or data migration. Handles snapshot selection or creation, IAM role setup, KMS encryption, S3 bucket preparation, export task execution, progress monitoring, and data verification. Use when exporting RDS/Aurora data to S3 for Athena, Glue, or Redshift Spectrum consumption.

Provisions, connects, migrates, and operates Amazon RDS for Db2. Applies when provisioning with IBM customer and site IDs (License Manager, BYOL, GovCloud), connecting over TLS, fixing SQL30082N after Secrets Manager rotation, migration from Db2 LUW (Linux, AIX, Windows, AS400) or z/OS mainframe (ADB2GEN, Q Replication), choosing code page/collation (EBCDIC, CCSID), S3 backup/restore, Multi-AZ and cross-region standby replicas, RDSADMIN procedures, customer-managed KMS BYOK, self-managed Active Directory Kerberos, Db2 audit to S3, minimum IAM, or colocation.

Diagnoses and resolves Amazon RDS for Oracle connectivity, authentication, networking, and driver troubleshooting. Applicable to any RDS-for-Oracle question including connecting a Python Lambda to RDS Oracle in a VPC with pooling and cold-start optimization, EKS pods to RDS Oracle via the Secrets Manager CSI driver with IRSA and SecretProviderClass, ORA-12170 cross-VPC timeouts from EC2, DPI-1047 cannot-locate-64-bit-Oracle-Client errors, and Oracle Connection Manager (CMAN) on EC2 as a proxy with HA across two AZs. Covers python-oracledb thin vs thick mode, init_oracle_client, RDS Proxy does NOT support RDS Oracle, port 1521, VPC peering, Transit Gateway, Kerberos with AWS Managed Microsoft AD, SSL/TLS/NNE, SSM port forwarding, EC2/ECS Fargate/EKS/Lambda, SQL Developer/DBeaver/Toad/SQLcl, and Secrets Manager.

Advises on Amazon RDS open-source engines (MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL) for instance creation, upgrade planning, commitment pricing, proxy evaluation, and Blue/Green deployments. Handles any RDS MySQL, MariaDB, or PostgreSQL question, including create a production-ready RDS MySQL instance, provision an RDS PostgreSQL database, run the RDS upgrade advisor for my RDS MySQL instance, what are my upgrade options, upgrade RDS MariaDB from 10.6 to the latest version, should I buy reserved instances or a savings plan for db.r7g.2xlarge RDS MySQL, change a VARCHAR to INT column on RDS MySQL 8.0 with Blue/Green, and does RDS Proxy help when PgBouncer already runs in transaction mode. Covers instance creation with production best practices, describe-db-instances and describe-db-engine-versions upgrade-target workflow, live prechecks via SSM or direct connection, RI versus DSP commitment pricing, RDS Proxy versus PgBouncer, and Blue/Green lifecycle with binlog replay compatibility.

Provides connectivity, authentication, and troubleshooting guidance for Amazon RDS for SQL Server. Applicable when users ask about SSMS times out connecting from EC2, Cannot generate SSPI context with Windows auth, connect RDS SQL Server from Lambda with pymssql, auth_scheme shows NTLM instead of KERBEROS on ECS Fargate, SSM tunnel to RDS SQL Server from laptop, port 1433 security group, TrustServerCertificate=True for localhost tunnels, SPN MSSQLSvc, AWS Managed Microsoft AD, CNAME not RDS endpoint for Kerberos, tds_version='7.4', encryption='require', port-as-string for pymssql, Secrets Manager credential caching in Lambda, error 18456 login failed. Covers Python (pymssql, pyodbc), .NET (Microsoft.Data.SqlClient), Java (JDBC mssql-jdbc), Node.js (tedious), IAM auth via RDS Proxy, and VPC/ECS/EKS/Lambda deployment.

Retrieves authoritative guidance on Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB across its supported engine variants. Applicable to any InfluxDB-on-AWS request including engine variant and licensing selection, provisioning and IAM, encryption at rest (AWS-owned and customer-managed KMS keys, key policies, and key lifecycle), schema design (tags vs fields, cardinality, HTTP/sensor/metric data modeling), migration from LiveAnalytics, Processing Engine plugins, connectivity (database endpoints and private or public access), and write/query errors.