The CLI commands create-table, update-table, and delete-table are asynchronous operations. The control returns immediately to the command line, but the operation runs asynchronously.

To wait for table creation, you can use the aws dynamodb wait table-exists --table <table-name command, which polls the table until it is active. The wait table-exists command may be used in scripts to wait until the table is created before inserting data. Similarly, you can wait for table deletion using the aws dynamodb wait table-not-exists --table <table-name command, which polls with describe-table until ResourceNotFoundException is thrown. Both the wait options poll every 20 seconds and exit with a 255 return code after 25 failed checks.