Users can interact with AWS in three primary ways:
- AWS Management Console – Web interface secured with password and MFA.
- AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) – Uses Access Keys for authentication, allowing scripted and command-line control.
- AWS Software Development Kit (SDK) – Language-specific libraries to access AWS services programmatically from applications.
Access Keys consist of:
- Access Key ID – acts like a username.
- Secret Access Key – acts like a password (must be kept private).
They are generated in the AWS Console, managed by each user, and should never be shared.
AWS CLI
- Command-line tool to interact directly with AWS service APIs.
- Enables automation through scripts.
- Open source: AWS CLI GitHub
- Provides an alternative to the AWS Management Console for managing resources.
AWS SDK
- Set of programming language–specific libraries for AWS API access.
- Supports multiple languages (JavaScript, Python, PHP, .NET, Ruby, Java, Go, Node.js, C++).
- Includes Mobile SDKs (Android, iOS) and IoT SDKs (Embedded C, Arduino).
- Allows AWS integration directly into application code.
- The AWS CLI itself is built on top of the AWS SDK for Python (Boto3).