Using Amazon DynamoDb for IP and co-ordinate based geo-location services part 7: querying the IPv4 range table

Introduction

In the previous post we loaded the limited IP range records into DynamoDb. As we’re only talking about about 250 records we could have added them in code one by one. However, that strategy would never work for the full MaxMind IP data set of 10 million records. So instead we looked at the built-in Import/Export functionality in DynamoDb. You’ll be able to go through the same process when you’re ready to import the full data set.

In this post we’ll see how to query the IP range database to extract the ID of the nearest geolocation. We’ll get to use the AWS Java SDK.

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Using Amazon DynamoDb for IP and co-ordinate based geo-location services part 6: uploading IPv4 range to DynamoDb

Introduction

In the previous post we successfully created a limited IPv4 range file ready to be uploaded to DynamoDb. We saw how the relevant bits were extracted from the reduced subset of the MaxMind CSV source file and how the DynamoDb-specific input file was created.

In this post we’ll see how to upload the source file to DynamoDb using the bulk insertion tools available there. We’ll only import our limited test data but the same steps apply for large data sets as well.

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Using Amazon DynamoDb for IP and co-ordinate based geo-location services part 5: creating the IPv4 source file for DynamoDb

Introduction

In the previous post we went through our strategy to save the longitude-latitude coordinates in DynamoDb for our geo-spatial queries later on. We said that we would save the records in DynamoDb in a way so that it fits queries according to a library designed by AWS which in turn uses a geo-library from Google.

In this post we’ll finally see some action. We’re ready to format an upload the IP range to DynamoDb. Actually we’ll show the techniques using only a small subset of the MaxMind raw data source. I strongly recommend you follow the same strategy and not try to upload 10 million rows at once. Make sure the process works for a small subset from start to finish and then go for the real thing. The steps outlined in this series will also apply to the full, paid version of the CSV source.

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Using Amazon DynamoDb for IP and co-ordinate based geo-location services part 4: lng/lat range strategy

Introduction

In the previous post we discussed our strategy to save the IP ranges in DynamoDb. We saw that it would be very inefficient to store the IPs as strings and run our queries based on some string manipulation. Instead we’ll store the IP ranges as lower and upper limit integers.

In this post we’ll discuss our strategy to save the longitude-latitude ranges for cities.

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Using Amazon DynamoDb for IP and co-ordinate based geo-location services part 3: IPv4 range strategy

Introduction

In the previous post we went through the details of the CSV source files that show the IP and lng/lat ranges and the actual locations. We saw that the two source files are linked by the location ID.

The next task is to import the source into DynamoDb. Recall that we want to handle queries based on IPs and lng/lat pairs separately, those are the primary goals of this series. The way to query an IP database is very different from querying a lng/lat database. An IP will fit into some IP range and we’d like to find that record. Whereas if you have a lng/lat co-ordinate pair and would like to find the nearest city/school/hospital/etc. within a certain radius then that query will involve some complex maths instead.

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Using Amazon DynamoDb for IP and co-ordinate based geo-location services part 2: MaxMind source files

Introduction

In the previous post we outlined the goals of this series and the tools that we’re going to use. We’ve got as far as downloading MaxMind’s free version of their geo-location source with IPs and longitude-latitude co-ordinates. We saw that the downloaded package had a number of CSV files.

In this post we’ll start off by looking at the structure of those files and how they are connected.

The source files

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Using Amazon DynamoDb for IP and co-ordinate based geo-location services part 1: introduction and goals

Introduction

There are a lot of applications out there that involve finding a point on a map. Putting hotels, restaurants, metro stations etc. on a map on your mobile device has become commonplace. Queries that find the nearest hospital, theatre or school need to be executed in a fast and efficient manner.

In this series we’ll discuss a possible solution to the following geo-location related scenarios:

• You have a pair of longitude (lng) and latitude (lat) co-ordinates and you’d like to find all locations in a circle around that point or just the nearest relevant location, e.g. the nearest city
• You have an IP address and you’d like to find the location details of that address, such as New York or Sydney

The series is centred around Amazon cloud based tools. Even if you’re not familiar with Amazon Cloud but looking for a solution to questions similar to the ones outlined above I encourage you to read on – you might just find something useful.

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