A Searchable AWS Services Reference With 67 Services and Bilingual Descriptions

AWS has over 200 services now. Nobody knows what all of them do. This reference covers the 67 services 95% of developers actually touch, with abbreviations, use cases, related services, and bilingual descriptions. Search by name, by abbreviation (EC2, S3), or by keyword ("queue", "cache", "cdn").

AWS is the elephant in every cloud discussion, but the official docs are designed for deep exploration — not fast lookup. "Which service do I use to send email again? SES? SNS? SQS?" is a question I ask myself every few months. A searchable, filtered, visual reference is faster.

🔗 Live demo: https://sen.ltd/portfolio/aws-services-ref/
📦 GitHub: https://github.com/sen-ltd/aws-services-ref

Features:

67 AWS services across 10 categories
Search by name, abbreviation, or keyword
Category filters (Compute, Storage, Database, Networking, Security, Analytics, ML, DevOps, Messaging, Serverless)
Bilingual Japanese / English descriptions
Use cases per service
Related services (clickable)
AWS-orange accent theme
Dark / light mode
Zero dependencies, 41 tests

Data structure

Each service:

{
  id: 'ec2',
  abbrev: 'EC2',
  name: 'Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud',
  category: 'compute',
  description: {
    ja: '仮想サーバを提供するサービス。インスタンスサイズ・OS・ネットワークを自由に選択可能',
    en: 'Virtual server service with configurable instance sizes, OS, and networking',
  },
  useCases: {
    ja: ['Web サーバ', 'アプリケーションサーバ', 'バッチ処理'],
    en: ['Web servers', 'Application servers', 'Batch processing'],
  },
  launched: 2006,
  related: ['ebs', 'vpc', 'auto-scaling'],
}

Related services become clickable chips, linking to their detail cards. This makes the reference feel like a wiki — finding SQS might lead you to SNS and EventBridge through the related links.

The 10 categories

Compute: EC2, Lambda, ECS, EKS, Fargate, Elastic Beanstalk, Lightsail, Batch
Storage: S3, EBS, EFS, FSx, S3 Glacier, Backup
Database: RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, Redshift, DocumentDB
Networking: VPC, CloudFront, Route 53, API Gateway, Direct Connect, Transit Gateway, ELB
Security: IAM, WAF, Shield, GuardDuty, KMS, Secrets Manager, Cognito, CloudTrail
Analytics: Athena, Glue, EMR, Kinesis, QuickSight
ML: SageMaker, Rekognition, Polly, Lex, Comprehend, Bedrock, Transcribe, Translate
DevOps: CloudFormation, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, CodeCommit, Cloud9, X-Ray, Systems Manager, Config, Organizations
Messaging: SQS, SNS, SES, EventBridge, Step Functions
Serverless: Lambda, API Gateway, Step Functions, EventBridge, AppSync, DynamoDB, Amplify

Some services span categories (Lambda is both compute and serverless) — the primary category drives filtering, but search matches either way.

Search across both languages

export function searchServices(query, lang = 'en') {
  const q = query.toLowerCase();
  return SERVICES.filter(svc =>
    svc.abbrev.toLowerCase().includes(q) ||
    svc.name.toLowerCase().includes(q) ||
    svc.description[lang].toLowerCase().includes(q) ||
    svc.useCases[lang].some(uc => uc.toLowerCase().includes(q))
  );
}

Typing "queue" finds SQS. Typing "email" finds SES. Typing "cdn" finds CloudFront. Typing "キュー" (queue in Japanese) finds SQS when the UI is in Japanese mode.

Why abbreviations matter

AWS is lived in abbreviations. Nobody says "Elastic Compute Cloud" — they say EC2. Nobody says "Simple Storage Service" — they say S3. The abbreviation is often all you remember. Search must accept both, and the UI should lead with the abbreviation visually.

<div class="service-card">
  <div class="abbrev">EC2</div>
  <div class="name">Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud</div>
  <div class="description">...</div>
</div>