# AWS-DB-Study — START HERE

Principal Database Engineer, Distributed SQL (Aurora DSQL) — Seattle. Primary req **3184305**. Secondary: Sr WW Specialist SA Database/Data & AI GTM **10535092**.

Role essence (from the live posting): **customer-facing technical enablement** — lead strategic enterprise customers through migration + query-performance problems onto distributed multi-region DSQL, define adoption best practices, channel field feedback into product direction. Every lab below ends with: "how would I teach this to a customer and what feedback would I take back to Eng?"

## One-sentence rule

> Every answer: state the pick, the first data you would pull, and the trap you ruled out — in that order.

## Scoring words (use aloud daily)

Ownership · Dive Deep · Bias for Action · Customer Obsession · Insist on Highest Standards · Earn Trust · active-active · snapshot isolation · optimistic concurrency · commit-time adjudication · quorum · witness region · disaggregated storage · journal · hybrid logical clock · failover · RPO/RTO · STAR with metric.

## 15-day plan (Nov 4–18)

| Day | Date | Focus | Audio | Lab |
|-----|------|-------|-------|-----|
| 1 | Nov 4 | DSQL architecture: disaggregated compute/storage, journal, HLC | E1 | Create single-Region DSQL cluster, run pgbench smoke |
| 2 | Nov 5 | DSQL transactions: MVCC, snapshot isolation, optimistic concurrency | E2 | Induced write-conflict lab, read retry logic |
| 3 | Nov 6 | Multi-Region DSQL: 2 active + witness quorum, failover | E3 | Multi-Region cluster, failover drill, measure lag |
| 4 | Nov 7 | DSQL limits + PG-compat gaps (quotas page) | E4 | Quota-boundary tests: txn size, rows, indexes |
| 5 | Nov 8 | Aurora Limitless: sharded vs standard tables | E5 | Shard-key design exercise on sample schema |
| 6 | Nov 9 | Aurora Global DB + RDS Multi-AZ vs replicas | E6 | Global DB lag reading; Multi-AZ failover sim |
| 7 | Nov 10 | DynamoDB Global Tables + DAX | E7 | Global table + DAX staleness demo |
| 8 | Nov 11 | ElastiCache Valkey/Serverless | E8 | Cache-aside + eviction drill |
| 9 | Nov 12 | DocumentDB / Keyspaces / Neptune picks | E9 | API-compat checklist per engine |
| 10 | Nov 13 | Redshift vs Athena vs S3 lake + zero-ETL | E10 | Athena partition-pruning cost demo |
| 11 | Nov 14 | DMS + SCT migration + logical vs physical replication | E11 | DMS task with PK/logging prereqs |
| 12 | Nov 15 | S3 durability + 403 triage order | E12 | Bucket policy/KMS/SCP 403 repro |
| 13 | Nov 16 | VPC for DBs + observability (PI/EM/CloudWatch) | E13 | SG/NACL misconfig hunt + PI top-SQL read |
| 14 | Nov 17 | Oracle→AWS translations + STAR story bank | E14 | Timed STAR reps, 90-sec intro spine |
| 15 | Nov 18 | Mock loop: customer migration whiteboard + SQL perf + LP + Bar Raiser | E15 | Full timed mock (whiteboard an Oracle→DSQL migration for a strategic customer), gap list |

## Files inventory

| File | What it is |
|------|------------|
| `00_START_HERE.md` | This file: plan, rule, scoring words |
| `STUDY_PLAN.md` | Daily repetition stack + Day 1–15 Focus/Listen/Lab/Say-aloud/Desk/Done-check + BASE-TO-BUILD |
| `CHEAT_SHEET.md` | Frameworks, decision matrix, first-data commands, Oracle→AWS, STAR index, intro spine (largest file) |
| `RESOURCES.md` | Official AWS docs links per day + Skills Builder labs |
| `AGENTS.md` | Project conventions |
| `scripts/` `audio/` `video/` `print/` `dist/` `tests/` | Builders, episodes, clips, print-only, mirrors, checks |

Next: open [STUDY_PLAN.md](./STUDY_PLAN.md), then keep [CHEAT_SHEET.md](./CHEAT_SHEET.md) open during every lab.