Amazon SimpleDB is a hosted database service that allows developers to store and query structured data via web services requests without needing to worry about data modeling, index maintenance, or performance tuning. It is a flexible, scalable, and inexpensive key-value store that automatically indexes data and enables real-time lookups and simple queries without complexity. Netflix migrated parts of its database from Oracle to Amazon SimpleDB to take advantage of its high availability, flexibility, and cost effectiveness compared to running its own data centers.