[res0nat0r]

Isn't this like saying by choosing Oracle as your database you are 'locked in' to it vs. MySQL? I'm locked-in to OSX right now typing this on my Macbook Air.

I think the phrase lock-in should apply only when a vendor makes it purposefully difficult to get your data out of their system only so you keep paying them, not when you freely opt-in to their service since it is the best choice for you at the time.

[cardmagic]

Lock-in is a function of the time and effort it takes to move to an alternative solution, not just the data but the entire system.

Think of beanstalk, think of the dependence on proprietary queuing systems. The more services you use, the more locked-in and the harder it is to decouple your systems from AWS.

The lock-in is not visible if you think of AWS as EC2, the lock-in is how hard it is to build your apps dependent on all the AWS services and try to move anywhere else.

[bmelton]

To an extent, but I don't know of too much development happening these days that aren't done with some sort of framework (at least for web apps), and I don't know of any frameworks that aren't built to at least support an SQL abstraction layer.

The one big app I have on EC2 isn't 'locked in' to Oracle because we're using Django + Oracle, though in testing it out, there is a non-zero effort to migrate to another database.

That said, you're not entirely wrong either, which is why such abstraction layers exist, and even despite how good many of them are, migrations are still non-trivial.