可以使用API​​代替SDK吗？

Question

I like fast code execution (because of that I switched from Python to Go) and I do not like dependencies. Amazon recommends using SDK for simpler authentication (but in Lambda I can get tokens from IAM from environment variables) and because of built into SDK retry on errors (few lines of code, as I think). Yes it is faster to write my code using SDK, but what additional caveats about using pure HTTP API instead of SDK? Am I too crazy about milliseconds? Such optimizations worth it?

Answer 1

I think the stated focus on performance belies real trade-offs.

Consider that someone will have to maintain your code -- if you use an API, the test area is small, but AWS APIs might change or be deprecated; if you an SDK, next programmer will plug in new SDK version and hope that it works, but if it doesn't they'd be bogged down by sheer weight of the SDK.

Likewise, imagine someone needs to do a security review of this app, or to introduce something not yet covered by SDK (let's imagine propagating accounting group from caller role to underlying storage).

I don't think there is a clear answer.

Here are my suggestions:

• keep it consistent -- either API or SDK (within given app)
• consider the bigger picture (how many apps do you plan to write?)
• don't be afraid to switch to the other approach later

I've had to decide on something similar in the past, with Docker (much nicer APIs and SDKs/libs). Here's how it played out:

For testing, we ended up using beta version of Docker Python bindings: prod version was not enough, and bindings (your SDK) were overall pretty good and clear.

For log scraping, I used HTTP calls (your API), "because performance", in reality comparative mental load using API vs SDK, and because bindings (SDK) did not support asyncio.