Amazon QLDB is a new specialist database technology which uses the concept of blockchain for database which maintains a history of every transaction using an immutable & cryptographically verifiable block hash for each record. QLDB uses an immutable transactional log, known as a journal, for data storage. The journal tracks every change to your data and maintains a complete and verifiable history of changes over time.
Sourcing data from the journal, QLDB uses a cryptographic hash function (SHA-256) with a Merkle tree–based model to generate a secure output file of your ledger’s full hash chain. This output file is known as a digest and acts as a fingerprint of your data’s entire change history as of a point in time. It enables you to look back and validate the integrity of your data revisions relative to that fingerprint.
Each ledge in QLDB has exactly one journal. A journal can have multiple strands, which are partitions of the journal.
QLDB is not a de-centralized blockchain network like Bitcoin or Ethereum, if you are looking for a managed block chain network then this is what you must be after –> Amazon Managed Blockchain
/* QLDB is now Generally Available in many regions. Ensure you update your awscli to the latest version to have access to QLDB from awscli. */
$ aws –version
aws-cli/1.16.240 Python/3.7.4 Darwin/17.7.0 botocore/1.12.230
$aws qldb help
NAME
qldb –
DESCRIPTION
The control plane for Amazon QLDB
AVAILABLE COMMANDS
o create-ledger
o delete-ledger
o describe-journal-s3-export
o describe-ledger
o export-journal-to-s3
o get-block
o get-digest
o get-revision
o help
Head over to your AWS Console > Amazon QLDB
- Create New Ledger called ‘ctransactions’
2. Go to Query Editor > Create Tables for the Account Ledger
CREATE TABLE Cardholder
CREATE TABLE Log_Record
CREATE TABLE Account
3. Create Indexes to help speed up queries against each table
CREATE INDEX ON Cardholder (CARD_NO)
CREATE INDEX ON Log_Record (TRXN_ID)
CREATE INDEX ON Account (ACCT_ID)
4. Insert 1 Record into the Ledger table ‘Account’. QLDB documents are stored in Amazon Ion format which is a Superset of JSON
INSERT INTO Account
{
‘FirstName’ : ‘Shadab’,
‘LastName’ : ‘Mohammad’,
‘ACCT_ID’ : ‘AMZN10000001’,
‘ACCTYPE’ : ‘Current’,
‘Address’ : ‘2000, 2 Park Street, CBD’
}
documentId
“7oOLmXPyHjXBSBCio76rJo”
This is the document ID for this transaction
5. Create more records and change the first record from ‘Current’ to ‘Saving’ account
Important :
Because QLDB does not enforce schema, you can insert the same document into a table
multiple times. Each insert statement commits a separate document entry to the journal, and
QLDB assigns each document a unique ID.
INSERT INTO Account
<< {
‘FirstName’ : ‘Shadab’,
‘LastName’ : ‘Mohammad’,
‘ACCT_ID’ : ‘AMZN10000001’,
‘ACCTYPE’ : ‘Saving’,
‘Address’ : ‘2000, 2 Park Street, CBD’
},
{
‘FirstName’ : ‘William’,
‘LastName’ : ‘Tell’,
‘ACCT_ID’ : ‘AMZN10000002’,
‘ACCTYPE’ : ‘Saving’,
‘Address’ : ‘2013, 29 Campbell PDE, Bondi’
},
{
‘FirstName’ : ‘Chris’,
‘LastName’ : ‘Wall’,
‘ACCT_ID’ : ‘AMZN10000003’,
‘ACCTYPE’ : ‘Current’,
‘Address’ : ‘2142, 15 Lane Cove, Marickville’
} >>
documentId
“L7S9f2cONhz1JQhj8Gj8bk”
“0007IXW5xSNDvq9gj3CZN8”
“JELcBIyjv8uKRHBfhbCvHp”
6. Now let us check for all the changes done to this account using below query. We can check for all modifications made to the Account ID. Each modification or inser generated a unique hash we can be traced back to what that modification was
SELECT
ACCT_ID FROM Account AS a BY ACCT_ID WHERE a.ACCT_ID = 'AMZN10000001'
ACCT_ID
“7oOLmXPyHjXBSBCio76rJo”
“L7S9f2cONhz1JQhj8Gj8bk”
As you can see there are 2 modifications to this record and we can verify what each of those modifications are
7. Check for the history for each new documentID for the Account
SELECT * FROM history(Account) AS h WHERE h.metadata.id
= '7oOLmXPyHjXBSBCio76rJo'
{
blockAddress: {
strandId: “KQrxUDo7jDX4scpbKkhEVZ”,
sequenceNo: 26
},
hash: {{6HVuwag6GMEki+ZRFaMdqidROpKZmsTsYcmWiAMZdmw=}},
data: {
FirstName: “Shadab”,
LastName: “Mohammad”,
ACCT_ID: “AMZN10000001”,
ACCTYPE: “Current”,
Address: “2000, 2 Park Street, CBD”
},
metadata: {
id: “7oOLmXPyHjXBSBCio76rJo”,
version: 0,
txTime: 2019-09-19T05:56:20.874Z,
txId: “2EOkrgLG2Xa7qBwEwnKzDJ”
}
}
SELECT * FROM
history(Account) AS h WHERE h.metadata.id = 'L7S9f2cONhz1JQhj8Gj8bk'
{
blockAddress: {
strandId: “KQrxUDo7jDX4scpbKkhEVZ”,
sequenceNo: 41
},
hash: {{+qFvFfRx1pi9QOkotc9MAuAWs6Tw7jn3sZqlPpEjSDA=}},
data: {
FirstName: “Shadab”,
LastName: “Mohammad”,
ACCT_ID: “AMZN10000001”,
ACCTYPE: “Saving”,
Address: “2000, 2 Park Street, CBD”
},
metadata: {
id: “L7S9f2cONhz1JQhj8Gj8bk”,
version: 0,
txTime: 2019-09-19T06:14:04.214Z,
txId: “2EOkrgMRCo4CBTUdJWSjmT”
}
}
Using the first hash we can see the account type was “Current”, and after we modified the document and checked it with the 2nd hash it now shows “Saving”. And we have a history of all modifications applied to that account to traverse back and check all modifications made to that Account ID.
8. To Verify a Document Revision
SELECT r.metadata.id, r.blockAddress FROM _ql_committed_Account AS r WHERE r.data.ACCT_ID = 'AMZN10000001'
id blockAddress
“7oOLmXPyHjXBSBCio76rJo” {strandId:”KQrxUDo7jDX4scpbKkhEVZ”,sequenceNo:95}
“L7S9f2cONhz1JQhj8Gj8bk” {strandId:”KQrxUDo7jDX4scpbKkhEVZ”,sequenceNo:95}
This is just the beginning of what can be possible to create in the FinTech world. No more complex audit reports and expensive 3rd part tools which are an additional overhead to manage, but your database itself keeps a history of any changes made to a transaction or account or debit/credit card.
References:
[1] Accessing Amazon QLDB Using the AWS CLI – https://docs.aws.amazon.com/qldb/latest/developerguide/Tools.CLI.html
[2] botocore – https://github.com/boto/botocore/commit/f646b7ea334c9dcf94af6ad201a45886c48c2648
[3] aws-cli – https://github.com/aws/aws-cli/commit/b3c7bd5a1b93d42ab1b75d99c33fc2b62b0dd6a4
[4] Installing the AWS CLI – Installing the AWS CLI Using pip – https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-chap-install.html#install-tool-pip
