Connect to Amazon Athena Data in Aqua Data Studio



Access Amazon Athena data from tools in Aqua Data Studio such as the Visual Query Builder and the Table Data Editor.

The CData JDBC Driver for Amazon Athena integrates Amazon Athena data with wizards and analytics in IDEs like Aqua Data Studio. This article shows how to connect to Amazon Athena data through the connection manager and execute queries.

About Amazon Athena Data Integration

CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from Amazon Athena. Customers use CData connectivity to:

  • Authenticate securely using a variety of methods, including IAM credentials, access keys, and Instance Profiles, catering to diverse security needs and simplifying the authentication process.
  • Streamline their setup and quickly resolve issue with detailed error messaging.
  • Enhance performance and minimize strain on client resources with server-side query execution.

Users frequently integrate Athena with analytics tools like Tableau, Power BI, and Excel for in-depth analytics from their preferred tools.

To learn more about unique Amazon Athena use cases with CData, check out our blog post: https://www.cdata.com/blog/amazon-athena-use-cases.


Getting Started


Create a JDBC Data Source

You can use the connection manager to define connection properties and save them in a new JDBC data source. The Amazon Athena data source can then be accessed from Aqua Data Studio tools.

  1. In Aqua Data Studio, select Register Server from the Servers menu.
  2. In the Register Server form, select the 'Generic - JDBC' connection.
  3. Enter the following JDBC connection properties:
    • Name: Enter a name for the data source; for example, Amazon Athena.
    • Driver Location: Click the Browse button and select the cdata.jdbc.amazonathena.jar file, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
    • Driver: Enter the Driver's class name, cdata.jdbc.amazonathena.AmazonAthenaDriver.
    • URL: Enter the JDBC URL, which starts with jdbc:amazonathena: and is followed by a semicolon-separated list of connection properties.

      Authenticating to Amazon Athena

      To authorize Amazon Athena requests, provide the credentials for an administrator account or for an IAM user with custom permissions: Set AccessKey to the access key Id. Set SecretKey to the secret access key.

      Note: Though you can connect as the AWS account administrator, it is recommended to use IAM user credentials to access AWS services.

      Obtaining the Access Key

      To obtain the credentials for an IAM user, follow the steps below:

      1. Sign into the IAM console.
      2. In the navigation pane, select Users.
      3. To create or manage the access keys for a user, select the user and then select the Security Credentials tab.

      To obtain the credentials for your AWS root account, follow the steps below:

      1. Sign into the AWS Management console with the credentials for your root account.
      2. Select your account name or number and select My Security Credentials in the menu that is displayed.
      3. Click Continue to Security Credentials and expand the Access Keys section to manage or create root account access keys.

      Authenticating from an EC2 Instance

      If you are using the CData Data Provider for Amazon Athena 2018 from an EC2 Instance and have an IAM Role assigned to the instance, you can use the IAM Role to authenticate. To do so, set UseEC2Roles to true and leave AccessKey and SecretKey empty. The CData Data Provider for Amazon Athena 2018 will automatically obtain your IAM Role credentials and authenticate with them.

      Authenticating as an AWS Role

      In many situations it may be preferable to use an IAM role for authentication instead of the direct security credentials of an AWS root user. An AWS role may be used instead by specifying the RoleARN. This will cause the CData Data Provider for Amazon Athena 2018 to attempt to retrieve credentials for the specified role. If you are connecting to AWS (instead of already being connected such as on an EC2 instance), you must additionally specify the AccessKey and SecretKey of an IAM user to assume the role for. Roles may not be used when specifying the AccessKey and SecretKey of an AWS root user.

      Authenticating with MFA

      For users and roles that require Multi-factor Authentication, specify the MFASerialNumber and MFAToken connection properties. This will cause the CData Data Provider for Amazon Athena 2018 to submit the MFA credentials in a request to retrieve temporary authentication credentials. Note that the duration of the temporary credentials may be controlled via the TemporaryTokenDuration (default 3600 seconds).

      Connecting to Amazon Athena

      In addition to the AccessKey and SecretKey properties, specify Database, S3StagingDirectory and Region. Set Region to the region where your Amazon Athena data is hosted. Set S3StagingDirectory to a folder in S3 where you would like to store the results of queries.

      If Database is not set in the connection, the data provider connects to the default database set in Amazon Athena.

      Built-in Connection String Designer

      For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Amazon Athena JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

      java -jar cdata.jdbc.amazonathena.jar

      Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

      A typical JDBC URL is below:

      jdbc:amazonathena:AWSAccessKey='a123';AWSSecretKey='s123';AWSRegion='IRELAND';Database='sampledb';S3StagingDirectory='s3://bucket/staging/';

Query Amazon Athena Data

You can now query the tables exposed.

Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the Amazon Athena Driver to get started:

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