When designing your cloud architecture sooner or later the question about the database will arise. Today Amazon Web Services announced the availability of Oracle database instances provisioned with the AWS Relational Database Service (RDS). However, there are many other options available, and in order to make an informed decision as to which will best suit your architecture, you should know the pros and cons of at least four:

• You can start installing your database on an AMI with the operating system of your choice, or even select an AMI provided by Oracle and set up the included Standard or Enterprise Edition.
• SimpleDB is an option if you prefer the scalability and availability of a non-relational database.
• The relational database service from AWS offers a convenient and easy way to create and manage an Oracle MySQL database as a cloud service.
• Starting today you can use RDS to create an Oracle database. So for the first time in the short history of cloud computing a licensed Oracle database can be used in the cloud with a pay per use model! You pay the database instance per hour used (or bring your own license)- and only this is real cloud computing.

I summarized my view in a detailed 12 page whitepaper (the weather here is too nice and I can’t bother myself putting all the screen shots into this blog posting).

The PDF describes all the details of RDS and compares them to the other options available. Also learn how to use WebLogic with RDS:

Cloud Databases and Oracle Whitepaper.

UPDATE: As of Aug/2012 there is support for APEX, Oracle XML DB and VPC now!

If you like to know more after reading the whitepaper have a look at my Oracle Cloud Computing book at Amazon and join the book’s Facebook site!