What changes are planned to the book following announcements at AWS:invent 2016?

I bought both this book and the Lambda in Action book, although I'm reading this one first. I wasn't sure which to buy, and figured I'd just buy both. The other book is going to print and won't be able to accommodate the recent announcements. It would be great if they could be reflected in this one.

If the text can't radically change, how about a pop-out box in relevant sections noting alternative approaches using the new features. I'd rather that than an appendix explaining Glue, Batch, etc. Otherwise it does seem a great opportunity would be lost for this book to be a true 2017 overview of AWS.

Thanks for your attention.

Reading more: AWS Step Functions:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws-step-functions-build-distributed-applications-using-visual-workflows/

This allows one to build a state machine for the transcoding workflow, so that one is working at a higher conceptual level. There's even a Ruby gem (that can be run from the command line) to check for unreachable states, etc.

Stephen

Hi Stephen, thanks for your question! We are going to spend the month of January revising the book to make sure it is up to date. We will revise all screenshots and text so that it matches all the recent announcements and best practice. In fact, we have already written a chapter that covers Step Functions and are updating our text to cover the Serverless Application Model (SAM) right now.

The book is still on track to come out on the promised date and it will be completely up to date for 2017.

Perfect answer, Peter!

It looks like the Serverless framework isn't accommodating Step Functions just yet, so that also justifies the book's focus on "bare-bones" AWS. And given that Step Functions require additional costs, it's probably good that you cover the video transcoding pipeline with and without them.

Good to hear about the updated screenshots too, since it will reduce confusion. And presumably the interface won't change too radically before the next re:Invent.

Stephen