Amazon Forecast is a fully managed service that makes machine learning-powered forecasting capabilities available without having to operate any infrastructure or implement machine learning algorithms. It is based on the same technology used at Amazon.com, and it can be used for a variety of common business purposes, such as managing inventory or staffing levels.

Learning how to use Amazon Forecast will benefit anyone who needs to make predictions based on time series data.

In this hands-on lab, you will prepare web log data for use with Amazon Forecast and initiate a dataset import in Amazon Forecast.

Learning objectives

Upon completion of this beginner-level lab, you will be able to:

• Parse Apache web logs using Python
• Load data into an SQLite database
• Query data in an SQLite database
• Import data in Amazon Forecast

Intended audience

• Cloud Architects
• Data Engineers
• DevOps Engineers
• Machine Learning Engineers
• Software Engineers

Prerequisites

Familiarity with the following will be beneficial but is not required:

• Amazon Forecast
• The Python scripting language
• Structured Query Language (SQL)

The following content can be used to fulfill the prerequisites:

• Forecasting Business Outcomes with Amazon Forecast
• Python for Beginners
• Introduction to SQL