AWS DMS (Database Migration Service) is often overlooked as a CDC tool because of its migration-focused marketing, but it's actually excellent for simple change data capture pipelines.

Key advantages for CDC use cases:

1. Native Aurora integration - Built-in support for Aurora Postgres with minimal configuration
2. Managed service - No infrastructure to maintain, automatic scaling
3. Direct Lambda integration - Can invoke Lambda functions directly for each change event
4. Built-in transformation - Supports light transformations during replication
5. Low operational overhead - Significantly simpler than Debezium/Kafka setups

Simple CDC pipeline pattern:

Aurora → DMS (CDC mode) → Lambda → Target System

When to use:

• Internal tools with moderate scale requirements
• Need for simple, maintainable solutions
• Teams with limited infrastructure support
• POCs that need to scale gracefully

When NOT to use:

• Need complex event routing/filtering
• Require exactly-once delivery guarantees
• Multi-region event distribution
• Sub-second latency requirements