Creating an AWS Database

In the last section, we created a local database and exported it to a .csv file named “HUC_data.csv”. This is the file we will add to a mySQL database. Here, we will create the database itself, assign permissions specific to PO.DAAC, and then populate the database with our HUC data.

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Note: Again, let’s hope AWS doesn’t change their UI too incredibly much. If this tutorial is no longer valid, I’d recommend trying to create the database through the command line instead by following this tutorial.

In order to access PO.DAAC through the command line, you’ll need to generate keys through JPL. You’ll first need to run:

pip install awscli

to install the command line tool if you don’t have it already installed. You’ll then need to clone this repo, and run the generateTempAccessKey.py file. It’ll ask for your JPL username and password, and, if entered correctly, will give you access to PO.DAAC’s AWS services through the command line for around 1 hour.

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Back to the tutorial though:

As mentioned in the Tutorial Overview section, I’ve created a video tutorial that will walk you step-by-step how to create the AWS database. I felt a pure video tutorial was necessary for this section because it’s mostly done on the AWS website. We’ll be pressing a lot of buttons, and I feel seeing it visually is a lot better than writing it out here. The video can be found here.

Note: Not covered in the video is the idea of creating indices mySQL databases. This is essential for quick access. More information on that can be found here.

After following the database creation part of this video tutorial, you should have a database populated with HUC data. It is now time to create the Lambda function used to query our newly created database.