Is it possible for the reporting team to query DynamoDB directly for dashboarding, or should we use Snowflake?

DynamoDB is a key‑value and document store optimized for low‑latency OLTP workloads. It lacks the analytical features—such as complex joins, aggregations, and columnar storage—that dashboards typically require. While you can query DynamoDB directly using the SDK or PartiQL, the performance for large analytical queries is poor, and you would need to build custom aggregation logic. Snowflake, on the other hand, is a columnar data warehouse designed for fast analytical queries, automatic scaling, and built‑in support for SQL, joins, window functions, and materialized views. A common pattern is to ETL or stream data from DynamoDB into Snowflake (using services like AWS Glue, Kinesis Data Firehose, or custom scripts). Once in Snowflake, the reporting team can run complex queries, create dashboards, and refresh them on demand. Therefore, for most dashboarding scenarios, using Snowflake as the analytical layer is the recommended approach.