Part 1: Creating a MySQL DB Instance
What is AWS RDS? - Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) delivers an easy setup, operation, and scaling of relational databases in the cloud.
What is MySQL Workbench? - If you're not at ease creating a MySQL database from the command line, MySQL Workbench is a visual database design tool that integrates SQL development, administration, database design, creation and maintenance into a single integrated development environment for the MySQL database system.
Why Connect MySQL to AWS RDS
If you're developing modern apps, a Relational Database Service like Amazon RDS allows the team to focus on your developments so you can give them the fast performance, high availability, security and compatibility they need. Your cloud-based service, capable of being optimised for memory, performance or I/O - and being provided resizable capacity while automating time-consuming administration tasks such as hardware provisioning, database setup, patching and backups.
Requirements
An AWS account, for this tutorial I used the Free Tier.
MySQL Workbench
I installed the community MySQL workbench from the MySQL website.
Creating A Database
If you haven't already, you will need to Sign in to the AWS Management Console and then navigate to the Amazon RDS console.
1. If you need to change the AWS Region in which you want to create the DB instance this can be done via the upper-right corner of the Amazon RDS console.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Databases.
3. Choose Create database and make sure that Easy Create is chosen.
4. In Configuration, choose MySQL.
5. For DB instance size, choose Free tier.
6. For DB instance identifier, enter a name for the DB instance, or leave the default name.
7. For Master username, enter a name for the master user, or leave the default name.
8. Complete by clicking on Create database.
The creation shall take a few minutes however it can take up to 20mins. Once completed the screen should look like the below.
Important
1. The View credential details button appears on the Databases page in the top right hand corner.
2. Choose View credential details to view the master username and password for the DB instance as you won't be able to view master user password again.
3. Should you need to change the master user password, you will have to modify the DB instance.
Next
If working from a local machine you will need to configure the advanced settings to make the Database instance accessible. However, do take care to carry out some sort of risk assessment based on your personal requirements.
Other Terminology :
SQL - A domain specific language used in programming and designed for managing data held in a relational database management system, or for stream processing in a relational data stream management system.
Relational Database - A relational database is a digital database based on the relational model of data.