What does read-after-write consistency really mean on new object PUT in S3?

I've always assumed that same you, i.e. that read-after-write applies to all clients, not just the client that did the write.

This blog post seems to confirm it (for what its worth), but I also did not find any definitive answer on official AWS docs:

https://shlomoswidler.com/2009/12/read-after-write-consistency-in-amazon.html

What is Read-After-Write Consistency?

Read-after-write consistency tightens things up a bit, guaranteeing immediate visibility of new data to all clients. With read-after-write consistency, a newly created object or file or table row will immediately be visible, without any delays.


As of Dec 1, 2020 (https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-s3-update-strong-read-after-write-consistency/) S3 does provide strong read after write consistency. However, it's still not clear that GET from a different client (other than the client which sent PUT request) will see the updated result. The blog mentions, "What you write is what you will read, and the results of a LIST will be an accurate reflection of what’s in the bucket."

Also in the distributed systems literature there is 'read-your-own-write' consistency model and a 'consistent read across clients after write' is the ultimate objective (not saying that it's impossible).

I suspect that S3 is eventually consistent for reads from different clients. There should be more clarity from AWS on this point, I feel.


Yes, it would be consistent.

The concept of a 'client' is irrelevant because each API call is independent.

The us-east-1 region (previously known as US-Standard) previously did not have read-after-write consistency, but it is now provided in all regions.