Amazon Lex now provides the express testing capability on the AWS Management Console to expedite the chatbot building process. Amazon Lex is a service for building conversational interfaces into any application using voice and text. With the express testing capability, you can start testing basic interaction elements such as the conversation flow, prompts, responses, and fulfillment logic soon after you initiate the build process without having to wait for the entire build to finish.  

Today, we are announcing the availability of Route 53 Resolver Query Logging, which lets you log the DNS queries that originate in your Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs). With query logging enabled, you can see which domain names have been queried, the AWS resources from which the queries originated—including source IP and instance ID—and the responses that were received.

Amazon RDS for Oracle now supports external authentication of database users using Kerberos and Microsoft Active Directory in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.  

Amazon AppFlow is a fully managed integration service that enables customers to securely transfer data between AWS services and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, now can be accessed programmatically. The Amazon AppFlow APIs and SDK enable developers to set up flows between source and destinations supported by Amazon AppFlow, create connector profiles and execute flows programmatically. Using the Amazon AppFlow APIs and the SDK, developers can incorporate Amazon AppFlow directly into their DevOps pipelines for data integrations. Amazon AppFlow API users will be charged at same pricing dimensions and rates as Amazon AppFlow. For pricing, please refer to the Amazon AppFlow pricing page. 

AWS X-Ray now supports using tags to manage access for creating, updating, and deleting X-Ray Groups and Sampling Rules .

Amazon RDS for SQL Server now supports trace flag 692 as a startup parameter using DB parameter groups. Enabling this trace flag disables fast inserts while bulk loading data into heap or clustered indexes.

AWS Elemental MediaConvert now allows you to create WebM DASH outputs using VP8 or VP9 video. You can use segmented content in a WebM container to support dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH). The ability to create WebM DASH outputs using the VP8 and VP9 codecs provides more options for preparing content for VOD delivery. For more information about VP8 and VP9 support in MediaConvert, please see our announcement here.

You can now initiate Internet Key Exchange (IKE) negotiations for your VPN connections from AWS. This feature is available for new and existing Site-to-Site VPN connections and can be accessed through the AWS Management console, AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), or the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI). AWS Site-to-Site VPN connections offer IPSec tunnels which use the IKE protocol to establish a tunnel. With this feature, AWS VPN endpoints will send the initial IKE message to your Customer Gateway (CGW). AWS endpoints will initiate when new VPNs are created or if the tunnel goes down. For more information, please see the documentation .

You can now join your Amazon EC2 for Linux instances to a domain configured with AWS Directory Service seamlessly. The new capability automates the previously manual approach for integrating Linux-based EC2 instances to your  AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory (AWS Managed Microsoft AD), or to an existing on-premises Active Directory (AD) using AD Connector . This makes it easier for you to launch and manage your Amazon EC2 for Linux instances, reducing deployment time and administration effort.

AWS IoT Core now enables customers to use Custom Authentication to authenticate and authorize messages from IoT devices on MQTT connections. In addition, customers using HTTP or WebSockets to connect to AWS IoT Core can now customize which headers or query parameters they use to pass device credentials to their Authorizers. For example, customers can now pass credentials via the Authorization header or access_token query parameter commonly used in OAuth implementations.