Amazon SNS : Mobile push and SMS messaging

Here is some specifics on how Amazon SNS works.  AWS SNS allows you to use one notification system regardless of the device.  http://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/SNSMobilePush.html.

You also asked about code samples:  Here is a code that uses the AWS SDK for Java to publish a message to a GCM Model endpoint: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/mobile-push-gcm.html#SNSMobilePushGCMAPI

Here is an example using the REST/Query API : http://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/2010-03-31/api/API_Publish.html

There is no limit on how many messages can be sent through a single topic.  This lists the only SNS limit: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws_service_limits.html#limits_sns : Default limit (meaning it can be raised, not a hard limit) of 3,000 topics.   Have one topic, or at most one topic for each device type.  This is because one topic can support deliveries to multiple endpoint types. For example, you can group together iOS, Android and SMS recipients. When you publish once to a topic, SNS delivers appropriately formatted copies of your message to each subscriber.

AWS SNS, SMS and mobile push

Three methods to send messages to mobile devices:

1. SNS mobile push : http://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/mobile-push-send-directmobile.html 

2. SNS mobile push with topics: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/mobile-push-send-topicmobile.html

3. SNS with SMS: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/SMSMessages.html

More details here on all three methods to send messages to phones using SNS here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/SNSMobilePush.html

 Here are some things to be aware of:

·         AWS Region: Mobile push to Android, iOS and Kindle Fire devices works in all public AWS regions, but SMS is only available in US-East

·         Recipient location: Mobile push recipients can be anywhere in the world so long as they have IP connectivity.  But SNS currently only supports US numbers.

·         Topic versus Direct mobile push: Mobile push notifications can be directly addressed to a single endpoint, but SMS currently must be delivered through a topic.

SNS SMS notifications

SNS SMS can only be sent from the US-East region at this time.  Sending SMS messages to notify an Oracle DBA regarding an Oracle databases alert is a great way to notify someone on call:

The steps to send a message are:

1. aws sns create-topic --name SMSNotifications --DisplayName SMSAWS

The ARN you need to use to use in the subscribe and publish commands will be displayed:

{

    "TopicArn": "arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:649163059618:SMSNotifications"

}

2. aws sns subscribe --topic-arn arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:649163059618:SMSNotifications --protocol sms --notification-endpoint 16035029999

3. aws sns publish --topic-arn arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:649163059618:SendSMS --message "Hello World from CLI"