Amazon Athena

According to Amazon, Athena is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. Amazon Athena supports and works with a variety of popular data file formats, including CSV, JSON, Apache ORC, Apache Avro, and Apache Parquet.

The underlying technology behind Amazon Athena is Presto, the popular, open-source distributed SQL query engine for big data, created by Facebook. According to AWS, the Athena query engine is based on Presto 0.172. Athena is ideal for quick, ad-hoc querying, but it can also handle complex analysis, including large joins, window functions, and arrays. In addition to Presto, Athena also uses Apache Hive to define tables.

Athena Query Editor

In the previous post, Getting Started with Data Analysis on AWS using AWS Glue, Amazon Athena, and QuickSight, we used the Athena Query Editor to construct and test SQL queries against semi-structured data in an S3-based Data Lake. The Athena Query Editor has many of the basic features Data Engineers and Analysts expect, including SQL syntax highlighting, code auto-completion, and query formatting. Queries can be run directly from the Editor, saved for future reference, and query results downloaded. The Editor can convert SELECT queries to CREATE TABLE AS (CTAS) and CREATE VIEW AS statements. Access to AWS Glue data sources is also available from within the Editor.

Full-Featured IDE

Although the Athena Query Editor is fairly functional, many Engineers perform a majority of their software development work in a fuller-featured IDE. The choice of IDE may depend on one’s predominant programming language. According to the PYPL Index, the ten most popular, current IDEs are:

1. Microsoft Visual Studio
2. Android Studio
3. Eclipse
4. Visual Studio Code
5. Apache NetBeans
6. JetBrains PyCharm
7. JetBrains IntelliJ
8. Apple Xcode
9. Sublime Text
10. Atom

Within the domains of data science, big data analytics, and data analysis, languages such as SQL, Python, Java, Scala, and R are common. Although I work in a variety of IDEs, my go-to choices are JetBrains PyCharm for Python (including for PySpark and Jupyter Notebook development) and JetBrains IntelliJ for Java and Scala (including Apache Spark development). Both these IDEs also support many common SQL-based technologies, out-of-the-box, and are easily extendable to add new technologies.

Athena Integration with PyCharm

Utilizing the extensibility of the JetBrains suite of professional development IDEs, it is simple to add Amazon Athena to the list of available database drivers and make JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) connections to Athena instances on AWS.

Downloading the Athena JDBC Driver

To start, download the Athena JDBC Driver from Amazon. There are two versions, based on your choice of Java JDKs. Considering Java 8 was released six years ago (March 2014), most users will likely want the AthenaJDBC42-2.0.9.jar is compatible with JDBC 4.2 and JDK 8.0 or later.

Installation Guide

AWS also supplies a JDBC Driver Installation and Configuration Guide. The guide, as well as the Athena JDBC and ODBC Drivers, are produced by Simba Technologies (acquired by Magnitude Software). Instructions for creating an Athena Driver starts on page 23.

Creating a New Athena Driver

From PyCharm’s Database Tool Window, select the Drivers dialog box, select the downloaded Athena JDBC Driver JAR. Select com.simba.athena.jdbc.Driver in the Class dropdown. Name the Driver, ‘Amazon Athena.’

You can configure the Athena Driver further, using the Options and Advanced tabs.

Creating a New Athena Data Source

From PyCharm’s Database Tool Window, select the Data Source dialog box to create a new connection to your Athena instance. Choose ‘Amazon Athena’ from the list of available Database Drivers.

You will need four items to create an Athena Data Source:

1. Your IAM User Access Key ID
2. Your IAM User Secret Access Key
3. The AWS Region of your Athena instance (e.g., us-east-1)
4. An existing S3 bucket location to store query results

The Athena connection URL is a combination of the AWS Region and the S3 bucket, items 3 and 4, above. The format of the Athena connection URL is as follows.

jdbc:awsathena://AwsRegion=your-region;S3OutputLocation=s3://your-bucket-name/query-results-path

Give the new Athena Data Source a logical Name, input the User (Access Key ID), Password (Secret Access Key), and the Athena URL. To test the Athena Data Source, use the ‘Test Connection’ button.

You can create multiple Athena Data Sources using the Athena Driver. For example, you may have separate Development, Test, and Production instances of Athena, each in a different AWS Account.

Data Access

Once a successful connection has been made, switching to the Schemas tab, you should see a list of available AWS Glue Data Catalog databases. Below, we see the AWS Glue Catalog, which we created in the prior post. This Glue Data Catalog database contains ten metadata tables, each corresponding to a semi-structured, file-based data source in an S3-based data lake.

In the example below, I have chosen to limit the new Athena Data Source to a single Data Catalog database, to which the Data Source’s IAM User has access. Applying the core AWS security principle of granting least privilege, IAM Users should only have the permissions required to perform a specific set of approved tasks. This principle applies to the Glue Data Catalog databases, metadata tables, and the underlying S3 data sources.

Querying Athena from PyCharm

From within the PyCharm’s Database Tool Window, you should now see a list of the metadata tables defined in your AWS Glue Data Catalog database(s), as well as the individual columns within each table.

Similar to the Athena Query Editor, you can write SQL queries against the database tables in PyCharm. Like the Athena Query Editor, PyCharm has standard features SQL syntax highlighting, code auto-completion, and query formatting. Right-click on the Athena Data Source and choose New, then Console, to start.

Be mindful when writing queries and searching the Internet for SQL references, the Athena query engine is based on Presto 0.172. The current version of Presto, 0.234, is more than 50 releases ahead of the current Athena version. Both Athena and Presto functionality continue to change and diverge. There are also additional considerations and limitations for SQL queries in Athena to be aware of.

Whereas the Athena Query Editor is limited to only one query per query tab, in PyCharm, we can write and run multiple SQL queries in the same console window and have multiple console sessions opened to Athena at the same time.

By default, PyCharm’s query results are limited to the first ten rows of data. The number of rows displayed, as well as many other preferences, can be changed in the PyCharm’s Database Preferences dialog box.

Saving Queries and Exporting Results

In PyCharm, Athena queries can be saved as part of your PyCharm projects, as .sql files. Whereas the Athena Query Editor is limited to CSV, in PyCharm, query results can be exported in a variety of standard data file formats.

Athena Query History

All Athena queries ran from PyCharm are recorded in the History tab of the Athena Console. Although PyCharm shows query run times, the Athena History tab also displays the amount of data scanned. Knowing the query run time and volume of data scanned is useful when performance tuning queries.

Other IDEs

The technique shown for JetBrains PyCharm can also be applied to other JetBrains products, including GoLand, DataGrip, PhpStorm, and IntelliJ (shown below).

This blog represents my own view points and not of my employer, Amazon Web Services.