I teach myself JavaScript and PHP by creating an application, and I decided that I would like to use Amazon EC2 and S3 as a platform. My question is to use S3 as a "database", but I will start with a little background.
An application uses this class to interact with S3 buckets: http://undesigned.org.za/2007/10/22/amazon-s3-php-class/documentation#getObject
When a user enters the application, the application downloads the file from the S3 bucket. Each user has his own file. Using JSON, it will then add the client part of the data, and then most of the “interaction” will be on the client side (using JavaScript) and a bit of PHP. As soon as the user is executed (perhaps after 30 minutes or so), the application will then save / load and replace the S3 file.
My reasoning behind all this is that I think the application will be very scalable. I hope that I can use load balancing, with each instance interacting directly with S3. If many users are logged in, I can simply create many “micro” or “small” instances to process them. One of the drawbacks of EC2 is that the instance crashes or shuts down, all data is lost, so my thoughts are that instead of constantly backing up everything - why not create an application around S3 in the first place?
My question is: Does this make sense? Is there a reason why I have not seen many examples of these kinds of things "in the real world"?
Thank you so much for your time!
Greetings