Use a DynamoDB Scan operation (carefully) in AWS Console

Scan is the simplest type of an operation we can perform on a DynamoDB table in order to receive items from it - it's going to go through the entire table and return all the items in it (up to 1MB).

It's easy to understand but it's always a good idea to think twice before using it, since it may use your entire read capacity in one go (and this is something you may not want).

In general using Scan is okay when:

• you have a very small table (like the one in this video)
• you're exporting all items in your table to another storage system
• you have a very specific use case (and you know what you're doing!)

In this lesson we're going to learn how to use the Scan operation in AWS DynamoDB console as well as how to avoid the common misconception when it comes to using the filter option for Scan - it will always go through the entire table, and you can only filter the results you'll receive. Therefore, it cannot be used to "optimize" the Scan operation.