How close is dynamodb-local to being the same thing as the AWS cloud version?
I'm primarily looking for a comparison on the interface(s) and functionality used by applications, though any other caveats would be helpful (say, IAM, IaC, or indexing).
I have used this for local testing with Jest (https://github.com/shelfio/jest-dynamodb). For mocking in unit tests for code that interfaces with DynamoDB it works wonderfully. Very easy to provision tables and indices for testing purposes.
There are some important caveats to keep in mind (AWS lists them here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/DynamoDBLocal.UsageNotes.html), and IAM policies aren't really going to work as you aren't running on AWS infrastructure.