Amazon Web Services just announced a new service called SimpleDB, which allows you to run queries on structured data in real time. And just like Amazon's other web services, you have the benefit of instant scalability on a reliable infrastructure.

Amazon SimpleDB provides a simple web services interface to create and store multiple data sets, query your data easily, and return the results.

Before you MySQL database developers jump at this idea, be aware that SimpleDB doesn't use typical relational database syntax. Using special syntax, you are able to input, manage and query your structured data, while easing the strain of typical RDBMS (Relational Database Management Systems):

While RDBMS offerings provide deep functionality, for many use cases, they introduce more complexity (and more cost) than is necessary. Many developers simply want to store, process, and query their data without worrying about managing schemas, maintaining indexes, tuning performance or scaling access to their data.

So you'd have to use SimpleDB-specific syntax in order to store and retrieve your data. However, it looks easy to learn.

The pricing looks a little more complicated than other Amazon web services:

Overall, I like the idea of using a strong network backbone like Amazon to create and maintain data. I guess it was only a matter of time before Amazon released something like this, with the popularity and success of services such as S3.