This section is an overview of new features and changes in Amazon E-Commerce Service (ECS) 4.0.
Amazon E-Commerce Service (ECS) is the new name for what was formerly called Amazon Web Services (AWS) product data. Amazon Web Services now include more than just product data, so ECS is now a subset of AWS.
You can now retrieve information from all Amazon product categories, including Apparel, Gourmet Foods, Sporting Goods, Jewelry, Health and Beauty, and Musical Instruments.
ECS 4.0 makes images from all product categories available, which allows you to create better applications and to merchandise products listed on Amazon more effectively.
Whereas AWS 3.0 only allowed you to retrieve three customer reviews per product, ECS 4.0 now lets you retrieve all customer reviews and includes more information about each review. Customer reviews can be retrieved by ASIN (Amazon Standard Item Number) or by review author.
ECS 4.0 allows you to retrieve richer information about specific products. For example, you can now obtain the color, luster, size, and clarity of a pearl sold in Amazon's Jewelry store. For PC products, ECS 4.0 provides information about the memory size, CPU speed, number of serial ports, parallel ports, FireWire® (IEEE-1394) ports, USB™ ports, USB 2.0 ports, VGA video ports, and much, much more.
The new product search functionality in ECS 4.0 allows you to create applications with more complex search options than those available on the Amazon "Advanced Search" pages.
The remote shopping cart functionality has been extended to include the Save for Later cart.
In AWS 3.0, you could retrieve the contents of Amazon wish lists, but you had to first go to the Amazon Web site to find the ID of the desired wish list. AWS 4.0 allows you to search for wish lists programmatically using the name, email address, or both name and email address of the wish list owner.
New to ECS 4.0, response groups allow you to retrieve only the information you want. In AWS 3.0, your options were "lite" (some data) or "heavy" (more data). By contrast, ECS 4.0 includes more than 30 response groups that you can mix and match to get exactly the information you want.
These new request formats allow you to perform multiple operations in a single call to ECS.
ECS 4.0 includes very specific error codes and messages that provide specific information about errors in your requests to help you understand and use the ECS API more effectively. These messages are returned in English or Japanese.
ECS 4.0 includes a self-documenting feature that will allows you to get information about the ECS API by using the service itself. The documentation is no longer your only resource for ECS usage information.