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QLDB is a fairly new phenomenon and my knowledge of "ledgers" is not very high - please pardon me for that. My doubt revolves around the question -

What happens to my data after I delete my ledger ? Does it still stay in my journal and hence, can I retrieve it ?

The larger context being - will I end up violating data protection norms by not being able to wipe out user data (since it will persist in the journal long after the ledger has been deleted) ?

Utsav T
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Short answer: no.

"ledger" is really just shorthand for "ledger database". So you could equally refer to a ledger as a database. Thus your question is the same as: what happens to my data after I delete my database? The answer should be unsurprising: the data is deleted.

A ledger's journal is dedicated to that ledger. You pay for IOs (reads and writes) to the journal and storage of the blocks in that journal. Once you delete the ledger, that storage capacity is reclaimed (you aren't paying for it anymore).

QLDB has the following mechanisms to prevent accidental deletion of a ledger:

  1. Ledgers have a "deletion protection" attribute on them that must be disabled before they can be deleted.
  2. When deleting via the console, an additional popup box is presented before the deletion proceeds.
  3. IAM policies can be used to restrict calls to Update and Delete APIs.

We recommend using exports to keep an additional copy of your data.

Marc
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  • Thanks @Marc . As a small followup question - what happens if I delete a few entries from the ledger ? Can I then retrieve them from the journal ? – Utsav T Jan 28 '20 at 21:51
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    Yes, or with history (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/qldb/latest/developerguide/working.history.html). – Marc Jan 29 '20 at 18:33