Welcome back! Having previously set up and configured tables in DynamoDB using Python's Boto3 library, today we focus on retrieving data from these tables. Retrieving data is crucial for any database system as it allows us to access and utilize stored data effectively. In this lesson, we concentrate on two pivotal operations—GetItem and BatchGetItem. Both are essential for efficient data retrieval, whether you're pulling a single item or multiple items based on their keys. By the end of this session, you'll be well-equipped to handle data retrieval tasks in DynamoDB proficiently.

Retrieving data from a DynamoDB table is straightforward when you have the full primary key of the item you're interested in. Let's say we need details for 'The Big New Movie' released in 2016 from our Movies table, where year and title make up the primary key.

For a simple read, you can retrieve the item like this:

If you only need certain attributes, you can specify them using the ProjectionExpression parameter: