Patent US 9,507,818

A system that implements a scaleable data storage service may maintain tables in a non-relational data store on behalf of clients. Each table may include multiple items. Each item may include one or more attributes, each containing a name-value pair. Attribute values may be scalars or sets of numbers or strings. The system may provide an API usable to request that values of one or more of an item's attributes be updated. An update request may be conditional on expected values of one or more item attributes (e.g., the same or different item attributes). In response to a request to update the values of one or more item attributes, the previous values and/or updated values may be optionally returned for the updated item attributes or for all attributes of an item targeted by an update request. Items stored in tables may be indexed using a simple or composite primary key.