Archive for category SQL
Java Development with Microsoft SQL Server: Calling Microsoft SQL Server Stored Procedures from Java Applications Using JDBC
Posted by Gary A. Stafford in AWS, Java Development, Software Development, SQL, SQL Server Development on September 9, 2020
This is an updated version of a very popular blog post, originally published in August 2012.
Introduction
Enterprise software solutions often combine multiple technology platforms. Accessing an Oracle database via a Microsoft .NET application and vice-versa, accessing Microsoft SQL Server from a Java-based application is common. In this post, we will explore the use of the JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) API to call stored procedures from a Microsoft SQL Server 2017 database and return data to a Java 11-based console application.
The objectives of this post include:
- Demonstrate the differences between using static SQL statements and stored procedures to return data.
- Demonstrate three types of JDBC statements to return data:
Statement,PreparedStatement, andCallableStatement. - Demonstrate how to call stored procedures with input and output parameters.
- Demonstrate how to return single values and a result set from a database using stored procedures.
Why Stored Procedures?
To access data, many enterprise software organizations require their developers to call stored procedures within their code as opposed to executing static T-SQL (Transact-SQL) statements against the database. There are several reasons stored procedures are preferred:
- Optimization: Stored procedures are often written by DBAs or database developers who specialize in database development. They understand the best way to construct queries for optimal performance and minimal load on the database server. Think of it as a developer using an API to interact with the database.
- Safety and Security: Stored procedures are considered safer and more secure than static SQL statements. The stored procedure provides tight control over the content of the queries, preventing malicious or unintentionally destructive code from being executed against the database.
- Error Handling: Stored procedures can contain logic for handling errors before they bubble up to the application layer and possibly to the end-user.
AdventureWorks 2017 Database
For brevity, I will use an existing and well-known Microsoft SQL Server database, AdventureWorks. The AdventureWorks database was originally published by Microsoft for SQL Server 2008. Although a bit dated architecturally, the database comes prepopulated with plenty of data for demonstration purposes.
HumanResources schema, one of five schemas within the AdventureWorks databaseFor the demonstration, I have created an Amazon RDS for SQL Server 2017 Express Edition instance on AWS. You have several options for deploying SQL Server, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, or installed on your local workstation.
There are many methods to deploy the AdventureWorks database to Microsoft SQL Server. For this post’s demonstration, I used the AdventureWorks2017.bak backup file, which I copied to Amazon S3. Then, I enabled and configured the native backup and restore feature of Amazon RDS for SQL Server to import and install the backup.
DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS AdventureWorks;
GO
EXECUTE msdb.dbo.rds_restore_database
@restore_db_name='AdventureWorks',
@s3_arn_to_restore_from='arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket/AdventureWorks2017.bak',
@type='FULL',
@with_norecovery=0;
-- get task_id from output (e.g. 1)
EXECUTE msdb.dbo.rds_task_status
@db_name='AdventureWorks',
@task_id=1;
Install Stored Procedures
For the demonstration, I have added four stored procedures to the AdventureWorks database to use in this post. To follow along, you will need to install these stored procedures, which are included in the GitHub project.
Data Sources, Connections, and Properties
Using the latest Microsoft JDBC Driver 8.4 for SQL Server (ver. 8.4.1.jre11), we create a SQL Server data source, com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDataSource, and database connection, java.sql.Connection. There are several patterns for creating and working with JDBC data sources and connections. This post does not necessarily focus on the best practices for creating or using either. In this example, the application instantiates a connection class, SqlConnection.java, which in turn instantiates the java.sql.Connection and com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDataSource objects. The data source’s properties are supplied from an instance of a singleton class, ProjectProperties.java. This properties class instantiates the java.util.Properties class, which reads values from a configuration properties file, config.properties. On startup, the application creates the database connection, calls each of the example methods, and then closes the connection.
Examples
For each example, I will show the stored procedure, if applicable, followed by the Java method that calls the procedure or executes the static SQL statement. I have left out the data source and connection code in the article. Again, a complete copy of all the code for this article is available on GitHub, including Java source code, SQL statements, helper SQL scripts, and a set of basic JUnit tests.
To run the JUnit unit tests, using Gradle, which the project is based on, use the ./gradlew cleanTest test --warning-mode none command.
To build and run the application, using Gradle, which the project is based on, use the ./gradlew run --warning-mode none command.
Example 1: SQL Statement
Before jumping into stored procedures, we will start with a simple static SQL statement. This example’s method, getAverageProductWeightST, uses the java.sql.Statement class. According to Oracle’s JDBC documentation, the Statement object is used for executing a static SQL statement and returning the results it produces. This SQL statement calculates the average weight of all products in the AdventureWorks database. It returns a solitary double numeric value. This example demonstrates one of the simplest methods for returning data from SQL Server.
/**
* Statement example, no parameters, returns Integer
*
* @return Average weight of all products
*/
public double getAverageProductWeightST() {
double averageWeight = 0;
Statement stmt = null;
ResultSet rs = null;
try {
stmt = connection.getConnection().createStatement();
String sql = "WITH Weights_CTE(AverageWeight) AS" +
"(" +
" SELECT [Weight] AS [AverageWeight]" +
" FROM [Production].[Product]" +
" WHERE [Weight] > 0" +
" AND [WeightUnitMeasureCode] = 'LB'" +
" UNION" +
" SELECT [Weight] * 0.00220462262185 AS [AverageWeight]" +
" FROM [Production].[Product]" +
" WHERE [Weight] > 0" +
" AND [WeightUnitMeasureCode] = 'G')" +
"SELECT ROUND(AVG([AverageWeight]), 2)" +
"FROM [Weights_CTE];";
rs = stmt.executeQuery(sql);
if (rs.next()) {
averageWeight = rs.getDouble(1);
}
} catch (Exception ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
} finally {
if (rs != null) {
try {
rs.close();
} catch (SQLException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.WARNING, null, ex);
}
}
if (stmt != null) {
try {
stmt.close();
} catch (SQLException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.WARNING, null, ex);
}
}
}
return averageWeight;
}
Example 2: Prepared Statement
Next, we will execute almost the same static SQL statement as in Example 1. The only change is the addition of the column name, averageWeight. This allows us to parse the results by column name, making the code easier to understand as opposed to using the numeric index of the column as in Example 1.
Also, instead of using the java.sql.Statement class, we use the java.sql.PreparedStatement class. According to Oracle’s documentation, a SQL statement is precompiled and stored in a PreparedStatement object. This object can then be used to execute this statement multiple times efficiently.
/**
* PreparedStatement example, no parameters, returns Integer
*
* @return Average weight of all products
*/
public double getAverageProductWeightPS() {
double averageWeight = 0;
PreparedStatement pstmt = null;
ResultSet rs = null;
try {
String sql = "WITH Weights_CTE(averageWeight) AS" +
"(" +
" SELECT [Weight] AS [AverageWeight]" +
" FROM [Production].[Product]" +
" WHERE [Weight] > 0" +
" AND [WeightUnitMeasureCode] = 'LB'" +
" UNION" +
" SELECT [Weight] * 0.00220462262185 AS [AverageWeight]" +
" FROM [Production].[Product]" +
" WHERE [Weight] > 0" +
" AND [WeightUnitMeasureCode] = 'G')" +
"SELECT ROUND(AVG([AverageWeight]), 2) AS [averageWeight]" +
"FROM [Weights_CTE];";
pstmt = connection.getConnection().prepareStatement(sql);
rs = pstmt.executeQuery();
if (rs.next()) {
averageWeight = rs.getDouble("averageWeight");
}
} catch (Exception ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
} finally {
if (rs != null) {
try {
rs.close();
} catch (SQLException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.WARNING, null, ex);
}
}
if (pstmt != null) {
try {
pstmt.close();
} catch (SQLException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.WARNING, null, ex);
}
}
}
return averageWeight;
}
Example 3: Callable Statement
In this example, the average product weight query has been moved into a stored procedure. The procedure is identical in functionality to the static statement in the first two examples. To call the stored procedure, we use the java.sql.CallableStatement class. According to Oracle’s documentation, the CallableStatement extends PreparedStatement. It is the interface used to execute SQL stored procedures. The CallableStatement accepts both input and output parameters; however, this simple example does not use either. Like the previous two examples, the procedure returns a double numeric value.
CREATE OR
ALTER PROCEDURE [Production].[uspGetAverageProductWeight]
AS
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;
WITH
Weights_CTE(AverageWeight)
AS
(
SELECT [Weight] AS [AverageWeight]
FROM [Production].[Product]
WHERE [Weight] > 0
AND [WeightUnitMeasureCode] = 'LB'
UNION
SELECT [Weight] * 0.00220462262185 AS [AverageWeight]
FROM [Production].[Product]
WHERE [Weight] > 0
AND [WeightUnitMeasureCode] = 'G'
)
SELECT ROUND(AVG([AverageWeight]), 2)
FROM [Weights_CTE];
END
GO
The calling Java method is shown below.
/**
* CallableStatement, no parameters, returns Integer
*
* @return Average weight of all products
*/
public double getAverageProductWeightCS() {
CallableStatement cstmt = null;
double averageWeight = 0;
ResultSet rs = null;
try {
cstmt = connection.getConnection().prepareCall(
"{call [Production].[uspGetAverageProductWeight]}");
cstmt.execute();
rs = cstmt.getResultSet();
if (rs.next()) {
averageWeight = rs.getDouble(1);
}
} catch (Exception ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
} finally {
if (rs != null) {
try {
rs.close();
} catch (SQLException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
}
}
if (cstmt != null) {
try {
cstmt.close();
} catch (SQLException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.WARNING, null, ex);
}
}
}
return averageWeight;
}
Example 4: Calling a Stored Procedure with an Output Parameter
In this example, we use almost the same stored procedure as in Example 3. The only difference is the inclusion of an output parameter. This time, instead of returning a result set with a value in a single unnamed column, the column has a name, averageWeight. We can now call that column by name when retrieving the value.
The stored procedure patterns found in Examples 3 and 4 are both commonly used. One procedure uses an output parameter, and one not, both return the same value(s). You can use the CallableStatement to for either type.
CREATE OR
ALTER PROCEDURE [Production].[uspGetAverageProductWeightOUT]@averageWeight DECIMAL(8, 2) OUT
AS
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;
WITH
Weights_CTE(AverageWeight)
AS
(
SELECT [Weight] AS [AverageWeight]
FROM [Production].[Product]
WHERE [Weight] > 0
AND [WeightUnitMeasureCode] = 'LB'
UNION
SELECT [Weight] * 0.00220462262185 AS [AverageWeight]
FROM [Production].[Product]
WHERE [Weight] > 0
AND [WeightUnitMeasureCode] = 'G'
)
SELECT @averageWeight = ROUND(AVG([AverageWeight]), 2)
FROM [Weights_CTE];
END
GO
The calling Java method is shown below.
/**
* CallableStatement example, (1) output parameter, returns Integer
*
* @return Average weight of all products
*/
public double getAverageProductWeightOutCS() {
CallableStatement cstmt = null;
double averageWeight = 0;
try {
cstmt = connection.getConnection().prepareCall(
"{call [Production].[uspGetAverageProductWeightOUT](?)}");
cstmt.registerOutParameter("averageWeight", Types.DECIMAL);
cstmt.execute();
averageWeight = cstmt.getDouble("averageWeight");
} catch (Exception ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
} finally {
if (cstmt != null) {
try {
cstmt.close();
} catch (SQLException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.WARNING, null, ex);
}
}
}
return averageWeight;
}
Example 5: Calling a Stored Procedure with an Input Parameter
In this example, the procedure returns a result set, java.sql.ResultSet, of employees whose last name starts with a particular sequence of characters (e.g., ‘M’ or ‘Sa’). The sequence of characters is passed as an input parameter, lastNameStartsWith, to the stored procedure using the CallableStatement.
The method making the call iterates through the rows of the result set returned by the stored procedure, concatenating multiple columns to form the employee’s full name as a string. Each full name string is then added to an ordered collection of strings, a List<String> object. The List instance is returned by the method. You will notice this procedure takes a little longer to run because of the use of the LIKE operator. The database server has to perform pattern matching on each last name value in the table to determine the result set.
CREATE OR
ALTER PROCEDURE [HumanResources].[uspGetEmployeesByLastName]
@lastNameStartsWith VARCHAR(20) = 'A'
AS
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;
SELECT p.[FirstName], p.[MiddleName], p.[LastName], p.[Suffix], e.[JobTitle], m.[EmailAddress]
FROM [HumanResources].[Employee] AS e
LEFT JOIN [Person].[Person] p ON e.[BusinessEntityID] = p.[BusinessEntityID]
LEFT JOIN [Person].[EmailAddress] m ON e.[BusinessEntityID] = m.[BusinessEntityID]
WHERE e.[CurrentFlag] = 1
AND p.[PersonType] = 'EM'
AND p.[LastName] LIKE @lastNameStartsWith + '%'
ORDER BY p.[LastName], p.[FirstName], p.[MiddleName]
END
GO
The calling Java method is shown below.
/**
* CallableStatement example, (1) input parameter, returns ResultSet
*
* @param lastNameStartsWith
* @return List of employee names
*/
public List<String> getEmployeesByLastNameCS(String lastNameStartsWith) {
CallableStatement cstmt = null;
ResultSet rs = null;
List<String> employeeFullName = new ArrayList<>();
try {
cstmt = connection.getConnection().prepareCall(
"{call [HumanResources].[uspGetEmployeesByLastName](?)}",
ResultSet.TYPE_SCROLL_INSENSITIVE,
ResultSet.CONCUR_READ_ONLY);
cstmt.setString("lastNameStartsWith", lastNameStartsWith);
boolean results = cstmt.execute();
int rowsAffected = 0;
// Protects against lack of SET NOCOUNT in stored procedure
while (results || rowsAffected != -1) {
if (results) {
rs = cstmt.getResultSet();
break;
} else {
rowsAffected = cstmt.getUpdateCount();
}
results = cstmt.getMoreResults();
}
while (rs.next()) {
employeeFullName.add(
rs.getString("LastName") + ", "
+ rs.getString("FirstName") + " "
+ rs.getString("MiddleName"));
}
} catch (Exception ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
} finally {
if (rs != null) {
try {
rs.close();
} catch (SQLException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.WARNING, null, ex);
}
}
if (cstmt != null) {
try {
cstmt.close();
} catch (SQLException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.WARNING, null, ex);
}
}
}
return employeeFullName;
}
Example 6: Converting a Result Set to Ordered Collection of Objects
In this last example, we pass two input parameters, productColor and productSize, to a slightly more complex stored procedure. The stored procedure returns a result set containing several columns of product information. This time, the example’s method iterates through the result set returned by the procedure and constructs an ordered collection of products, List<Product> object. The Product objects in the list are instances of the Product.java POJO class. The method converts each results set’s row’s field value into a Product property (e.g., Product.Size, Product.Model). Using a collection is a common method for persisting data from a result set in an application.
CREATE OR
ALTER PROCEDURE [Production].[uspGetProductsByColorAndSize]
@productColor VARCHAR(20),
@productSize INTEGER
AS
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;
SELECT p.[ProductNumber], m.[Name] AS [Model], p.[Name] AS [Product], p.[Color], p.[Size]
FROM [Production].[ProductModel] AS m
INNER JOIN
[Production].[Product] AS p ON m.[ProductModelID] = p.[ProductModelID]
WHERE (p.[Color] = @productColor)
AND (p.[Size] = @productSize)
ORDER BY p.[ProductNumber], [Model], [Product]
END
GO
The calling Java method is shown below.
/**
* CallableStatement example, (2) input parameters, returns ResultSet
*
* @param color
* @param size
* @return List of Product objects
*/
public List<Product> getProductsByColorAndSizeCS(String color, String size) {
CallableStatement cstmt = null;
ResultSet rs = null;
List<Product> productList = new ArrayList<>();
try {
cstmt = connection.getConnection().prepareCall(
"{call [Production].[uspGetProductsByColorAndSize](?, ?)}",
ResultSet.TYPE_SCROLL_INSENSITIVE,
ResultSet.CONCUR_READ_ONLY);
cstmt.setString("productColor", color);
cstmt.setString("productSize", size);
boolean results = cstmt.execute();
int rowsAffected = 0;
// Protects against lack of SET NOCOUNT in stored procedure
while (results || rowsAffected != -1) {
if (results) {
rs = cstmt.getResultSet();
break;
} else {
rowsAffected = cstmt.getUpdateCount();
}
results = cstmt.getMoreResults();
}
while (rs.next()) {
Product product = new Product(
rs.getString("Product"),
rs.getString("ProductNumber"),
rs.getString("Color"),
rs.getString("Size"),
rs.getString("Model"));
productList.add(product);
}
} catch (Exception ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
} finally {
if (rs != null) {
try {
rs.close();
} catch (SQLException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.WARNING, null, ex);
}
}
if (cstmt != null) {
try {
cstmt.close();
} catch (SQLException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(RunExamples.class.getName()).
log(Level.WARNING, null, ex);
}
}
}
return productList;
}
Proper T-SQL: Schema Reference and Brackets
You will notice in all T-SQL statements, I refer to the schema as well as the table or stored procedure name (e.g., {call [Production].[uspGetAverageProductWeightOUT](?)}). According to Microsoft, it is always good practice to refer to database objects by a schema name and the object name, separated by a period; that even includes the default schema (e.g., dbo).
You will also notice I wrap the schema and object names in square brackets (e.g., SELECT [ProductNumber] FROM [Production].[ProductModel]). The square brackets are to indicate that the name represents an object and not a reserved word (e.g, CURRENT or NATIONAL). By default, SQL Server adds these to make sure the scripts it generates run correctly.
Running the Examples
The application will display the name of the method being called, a description, the duration of time it took to retrieve the data, and the results returned by the method.
Below, we see the results.
SQL Statement Performance
This post is certainly not about SQL performance, demonstrated by the fact I am only using Amazon RDS for SQL Server 2017 Express Edition on a single, very underpowered db.t2.micro Amazon RDS instance types. However, I have added a timer feature, ProcessTimer.java class, to capture the duration of time each example takes to return data, measured in milliseconds. The ProcessTimer.java class is part of the project code. Using the timer, you should observe significant differences between the first run and proceeding runs of the application for several of the called methods. The time difference is a result of several factors, primarily pre-compilation of the SQL statements and SQL Server plan caching.
The effects of these two factors are easily demonstrated by clearing the SQL Server plan cache (see SQL script below) using DBCC (Database Console Commands) statements. and then running the application twice in a row. The second time, pre-compilation and plan caching should result in significantly faster times for the prepared statements and callable statements, in Examples 2–6. In the two random runs shown below, we see up to a 497% improvement in query time.
USE AdventureWorks;
DBCC FREESYSTEMCACHE('SQL Plans');
GO
CHECKPOINT;
GO
-- Impossible to run with Amazon RDS for Microsoft SQL Server on AWS
-- DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS;
-- GO
The first run results are shown below.
SQL SERVER STATEMENT EXAMPLES
======================================
Method: GetAverageProductWeightST
Description: Statement, no parameters, returns Integer
Duration (ms): 122
Results: Average product weight (lb): 12.43
---
Method: GetAverageProductWeightPS
Description: PreparedStatement, no parameters, returns Integer
Duration (ms): 146
Results: Average product weight (lb): 12.43
---
Method: GetAverageProductWeightCS
Description: CallableStatement, no parameters, returns Integer
Duration (ms): 72
Results: Average product weight (lb): 12.43
---
Method: GetAverageProductWeightOutCS
Description: CallableStatement, (1) output parameter, returns Integer
Duration (ms): 623
Results: Average product weight (lb): 12.43
---
Method: GetEmployeesByLastNameCS
Description: CallableStatement, (1) input parameter, returns ResultSet
Duration (ms): 830
Results: Last names starting with 'Sa': 7
Last employee found: Sandberg, Mikael Q
---
Method: GetProductsByColorAndSizeCS
Description: CallableStatement, (2) input parameter, returns ResultSet
Duration (ms): 427
Results: Products found (color: 'Red', size: '44'): 7
First product: Road-650 Red, 44 (BK-R50R-44)
---
The second run results are shown below.
SQL SERVER STATEMENT EXAMPLES
======================================
Method: GetAverageProductWeightST
Description: Statement, no parameters, returns Integer
Duration (ms): 116
Results: Average product weight (lb): 12.43
---
Method: GetAverageProductWeightPS
Description: PreparedStatement, no parameters, returns Integer
Duration (ms): 89
Results: Average product weight (lb): 12.43
---
Method: GetAverageProductWeightCS
Description: CallableStatement, no parameters, returns Integer
Duration (ms): 80
Results: Average product weight (lb): 12.43
---
Method: GetAverageProductWeightOutCS
Description: CallableStatement, (1) output parameter, returns Integer
Duration (ms): 340
Results: Average product weight (lb): 12.43
---
Method: GetEmployeesByLastNameCS
Description: CallableStatement, (1) input parameter, returns ResultSet
Duration (ms): 139
Results: Last names starting with 'Sa': 7
Last employee found: Sandberg, Mikael Q
---
Method: GetProductsByColorAndSizeCS
Description: CallableStatement, (2) input parameter, returns ResultSet
Duration (ms): 208
Results: Products found (color: 'Red', size: '44'): 7
First product: Road-650 Red, 44 (BK-R50R-44)
---
Conclusion
This post has demonstrated several methods for querying and calling stored procedures from a SQL Server 2017 database using JDBC with the Microsoft JDBC Driver 8.4 for SQL Server. Although the examples are quite simple, the same patterns can be used with more complex stored procedures, with multiple input and output parameters, which not only select, but insert, update, and delete data.
There are some limitations of the Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server you should be aware of by reading the documentation. However, for most tasks that require database interaction, the Driver provides adequate functionality with SQL Server.
This blog represents my own viewpoints and not of my employer, Amazon Web Services.
Getting Started with Presto Federated Queries using Ahana’s PrestoDB Sandbox on AWS
Posted by Gary A. Stafford in AWS, Big Data, Software Development, SQL on September 3, 2020
Introduction
According to The Presto Foundation, Presto (aka PrestoDB), not to be confused with PrestoSQL, is an open-source, distributed, ANSI SQL compliant query engine. Presto is designed to run interactive ad-hoc analytic queries against data sources of all sizes ranging from gigabytes to petabytes. Presto is used in production at an immense scale by many well-known organizations, including Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Alibaba, Airbnb, Netflix, Pinterest, Atlassian, Nasdaq, and more.
In the following post, we will gain a better understanding of Presto’s ability to execute federated queries, which join multiple disparate data sources without having to move the data. Additionally, we will explore Apache Hive, the Hive Metastore, Hive partitioned tables, and the Apache Parquet file format.
Presto on AWS
There are several options for Presto on AWS. AWS recommends Amazon EMR and Amazon Athena. Presto comes pre-installed on EMR 5.0.0 and later. The Athena query engine is a derivation of Presto 0.172 and does not support all of Presto’s native features. However, Athena has many comparable features and deep integrations with other AWS services. If you need full, fine-grain control, you could deploy and manage Presto, yourself, on Amazon EC2, Amazon ECS, or Amazon EKS. Lastly, you may decide to purchase a Presto distribution with commercial support from an AWS Partner, such as Ahana or Starburst. If your organization needs 24x7x365 production-grade support from experienced Presto engineers, this is an excellent choice.
Federated Queries
In a modern Enterprise, it is rare to find all data living in a monolithic datastore. Given the multitude of available data sources, internal and external to an organization, and the growing number of purpose-built databases, analytics engines must be able to join and aggregate data across many sources efficiently. AWS defines a federated query as a capability that ‘enables data analysts, engineers, and data scientists to execute SQL queries across data stored in relational, non-relational, object, and custom data sources.’
Presto allows querying data where it lives, including Apache Hive, Thrift, Kafka, Kudu, and Cassandra, Elasticsearch, and MongoDB. In fact, there are currently 24 different Presto data source connectors available. With Presto, we can write queries that join multiple disparate data sources, without moving the data. Below is a simple example of a Presto federated query statement that correlates a customer’s credit rating with their age and gender. The query federates two different data sources, a PostgreSQL database table, postgresql.public.customer, and an Apache Hive Metastore table, hive.default.customer_demographics, whose underlying data resides in Amazon S3.
Ahana
The Linux Foundation’s Presto Foundation member, Ahana, was founded as the first company focused on bringing PrestoDB-based ad hoc analytics offerings to market and working to foster growth and evangelize the Presto community. Ahana’s mission is to simplify ad hoc analytics for organizations of all shapes and sizes. Ahana has been successful in raising seed funding, led by GV (formerly Google Ventures). Ahana’s founders have a wealth of previous experience in tech companies, including Alluxio, Kinetica, Couchbase, IBM, Apple, Splunk, and Teradata.
PrestoDB Sandbox
This post will use Ahana’s PrestoDB Sandbox, an Amazon Linux 2, AMI-based solution available on AWS Marketplace, to execute Presto federated queries.
Ahana’s PrestoDB Sandbox AMI allows you to easily get started with Presto to query data wherever your data resides. This AMI configures a single EC2 instance Sandbox to be both the Presto Coordinator and a Presto Worker. It comes with an Apache Hive Metastore backed by PostgreSQL bundled in. In addition, the following catalogs are bundled in to try, test, and prototype with Presto:
- JMX: useful for monitoring and debugging Presto
- Memory: stores data and metadata in RAM, which is discarded when Presto restarts
- TPC-DS: provides a set of schemas to support the TPC Benchmark DS
- TPC-H: provides a set of schemas to support the TPC Benchmark H
Apache Hive
In this demonstration, we will use Apache Hive and an Apache Hive Metastore backed by PostgreSQL. Apache Hive is data warehouse software that facilitates reading, writing, and managing large datasets residing in distributed storage using SQL. The structure can be projected onto data already in storage. A command-line tool and JDBC driver are provided to connect users to Hive. The Metastore provides two essential features of a data warehouse: data abstraction and data discovery. Hive accomplishes both features by providing a metadata repository that is tightly integrated with the Hive query processing system so that data and metadata are in sync.
Getting Started
To get started creating federated queries with Presto, we first need to create and configure our AWS environment, as shown below.
Subscribe to Ahana’s PrestoDB Sandbox
To start, subscribe to Ahana’s PrestoDB Sandbox on AWS Marketplace. Make sure you are aware of the costs involved. The AWS current pricing for the default, Linux-based r5.xlarge on-demand EC2 instance hosted in US East (N. Virginia) is USD 0.252 per hour. For the demonstration, since performance is not an issue, you could try a smaller EC2 instance, such as r5.large instance costs USD 0.126 per hour.
The configuration process will lead you through the creation of an EC2 instance based on Ahana’s PrestoDB Sandbox AMI.
I chose to create the EC2 instance in my default VPC. Part of the demonstration includes connecting to Presto locally using JDBC. Therefore, it was also necessary to include a public IP address for the EC2 instance. If you chose to do so, I strongly recommend limiting the required ports 22 and 8080 in the instance’s Security Group to just your IP address (a /32 CIDR block).
Lastly, we need to assign an IAM Role to the EC2 instance, which has access to Amazon S3. I assigned the AWS managed policy, AmazonS3FullAccess, to the EC2’s IAM Role.
AWS managed policy to the RolePart of the configuration also asks for a key pair. You can use an existing key or create a new key for the demo. For reference in future commands, I am using a key named ahana-presto and my key path of ~/.ssh/ahana-presto.pem. Be sure to update the commands to match your own key’s name and location.
Once complete, instructions for using the PrestoDB Sandbox EC2 are provided.
You can view the running EC2 instance, containing Presto, from the web-based AWS EC2 Management Console. Make sure to note the public IPv4 address or the public IPv4 DNS address as this value will be required during the demo.
AWS CloudFormation
We will use Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL and Amazon S3 as additional data sources for Presto. Included in the project files on GitHub is an AWS CloudFormation template, cloudformation/presto_ahana_demo.yaml. The template creates a single RDS for PostgreSQL instance in the default VPC and an encrypted Amazon S3 bucket.
All the source code for this post is on GitHub. Use the following command to git clone a local copy of the project.
git clone \
–branch master –single-branch –depth 1 –no-tags \
https://github.com/garystafford/presto-aws-federated-queries.git
To create the AWS CloudFormation stack from the template, cloudformation/rds_s3.yaml, execute the following aws cloudformation command. Make sure you change the DBAvailabilityZone parameter value (shown in bold) to match the AWS Availability Zone in which your Ahana PrestoDB Sandbox EC2 instance was created. In my case, us-east-1f.
aws cloudformation create-stack \
--stack-name ahana-prestodb-demo \
--template-body file://cloudformation/presto_ahana_demo.yaml \
--parameters ParameterKey=DBAvailabilityZone,ParameterValue=us-east-1f
To ensure the RDS for PostgreSQL database instance can be accessed by Presto running on the Ahana PrestoDB Sandbox EC2, manually add the PrestoDB Sandbox EC2’s Security Group to port 5432 within the database instance’s VPC Security Group’s Inbound rules. I have also added my own IP to port 5432, which enables me to connect to the RDS instance directly from my IDE using JDBC.
The AWS CloudFormation stack’s Outputs tab includes a set of values, including the JDBC connection string for the new RDS for PostgreSQL instance, JdbcConnString, and the Amazon S3 bucket’s name, Bucket. All these values will be required during the demonstration.
Preparing the PrestoDB Sandbox
There are a few steps we need to take to properly prepare the PrestoDB Sandbox EC2 for our demonstration. First, use your PrestoDB Sandbox EC2 SSH key to scp the properties and sql directories to the Presto EC2 instance. First, you will need to set the EC2_ENDPOINT value (shown in bold) to your EC2’s public IPv4 address or public IPv4 DNS value. You can hardcode the value or use the aws ec2 API command is shown below to retrieve the value programmatically.
# on local workstation
EC2_ENDPOINT=$(aws ec2 describe-instances \
--filters "Name=product-code,Values=ejee5zzmv4tc5o3tr1uul6kg2" \
"Name=product-code.type,Values=marketplace" \
--query "Reservations[*].Instances[*].{Instance:PublicDnsName}" \
--output text)
scp -i "~/.ssh/ahana-presto.pem" \
-r properties/ sql/ \
ec2-user@${EC2_ENDPOINT}:~/
ssh -i "~/.ssh/ahana-presto.pem" ec2-user@${EC2_ENDPOINT}
Environment Variables
Next, we need to set several environment variables. First, replace the DATA_BUCKET and POSTGRES_HOST values below (shown in bold) to match your environment. The PGPASSWORD value should be correct unless you changed it in the CloudFormation template. Then, execute the command to add the variables to your .bash_profile file.
echo """
export DATA_BUCKET=prestodb-demo-databucket-CHANGE_ME
export POSTGRES_HOST=presto-demo.CHANGE_ME.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com
export PGPASSWORD=5up3r53cr3tPa55w0rd
export JAVA_HOME=/usr
export HADOOP_HOME=/home/ec2-user/hadoop
export HADOOP_CLASSPATH=$HADOOP_HOME/share/hadoop/tools/lib/*
export HIVE_HOME=/home/ec2-user/hive
export PATH=$HIVE_HOME/bin:$HADOOP_HOME/bin:$PATH
""" >>~/.bash_profile
Optionally, I suggest updating the EC2 instance with available updates and install your favorite tools, likehtop, to monitor the EC2 performance.
yes | sudo yum update
yes | sudo yum install htop
Before further configuration for the demonstration, let’s review a few aspects of the Ahana PrestoDB EC2 instance. There are several applications pre-installed on the instance, including Java, Presto, Hadoop, PostgreSQL, and Hive. Versions shown are current as of early September 2020.
java -version
# openjdk version "1.8.0_252"
# OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_252-b09)
# OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.252-b09, mixed mode)
hadoop version
# Hadoop 2.9.2
postgres --version
# postgres (PostgreSQL) 9.2.24
psql --version
# psql (PostgreSQL) 9.2.24
hive --version
# Hive 2.3.7
presto-cli --version
# Presto CLI 0.235-cb21100
The Presto configuration files are in the /etc/presto/ directory. The Hive configuration files are in the ~/hive/conf/ directory. Here are a few commands you can use to gain a better understanding of their configurations.
ls /etc/presto/
cat /etc/presto/jvm.config
cat /etc/presto/config.properties
cat /etc/presto/node.properties
# installed and configured catalogs
ls /etc/presto/catalog/
cat ~/hive/conf/hive-site.xml
Configure Presto
To configure Presto, we need to create and copy a new Presto postgresql catalog properties file for the newly created RDS for PostgreSQL instance. Modify the properties/rds_postgresql.properties file, replacing the value, connection-url (shown in bold), with your own JDBC connection string, shown in the CloudFormation Outputs tab.
connector.name=postgresql
connection-url=jdbc:postgresql://presto-demo.abcdefg12345.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com:5432/shipping
connection-user=presto
connection-password=5up3r53cr3tPa55w0rd
Move the rds_postgresql.properties file to its correct location using sudo.
sudo mv properties/rds_postgresql.properties /etc/presto/catalog/
We also need to modify the existing Hive catalog properties file, which will allow us to write to non-managed Hive tables from Presto.
connector.name=hive-hadoop2
hive.metastore.uri=thrift://localhost:9083
hive.non-managed-table-writes-enabled=true
The following command will overwrite the existing hive.properties file with the modified version containing the new property.
sudo mv properties/hive.properties |
/etc/presto/catalog/hive.properties
To finalize the configuration of the catalog properties files, we need to restart Presto. The easiest way is to reboot the EC2 instance, then SSH back into the instance. Since our environment variables are in the .bash_profile file, they will survive a restart and logging back into the EC2 instance.
sudo reboot
Add Tables to Apache Hive Metastore
We will use RDS for PostgreSQL and Apache Hive Metastore/Amazon S3 as additional data sources for our federated queries. The Ahana PrestoDB Sandbox instance comes pre-configured with Apache Hive and an Apache Hive Metastore, backed by PostgreSQL (a separate PostgreSQL 9.x instance pre-installed on the EC2).
The Sandbox’s instance of Presto comes pre-configured with schemas for the TPC Benchmark DS (TPC-DS). We will create identical tables in our Apache Hive Metastore, which correspond to three external tables in the TPC-DS data source’s sf1 schema: tpcds.sf1.customer, tpcds.sf1.customer_address, and tpcds.sf1.customer_demographics. A Hive external table describes the metadata/schema on external files. External table files can be accessed and managed by processes outside of Hive. As an example, here is the SQL statement that creates the external customer table in the Hive Metastore and whose data will be stored in the S3 bucket.
CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `customer`(
`c_customer_sk` bigint,
`c_customer_id` char(16),
`c_current_cdemo_sk` bigint,
`c_current_hdemo_sk` bigint,
`c_current_addr_sk` bigint,
`c_first_shipto_date_sk` bigint,
`c_first_sales_date_sk` bigint,
`c_salutation` char(10),
`c_first_name` char(20),
`c_last_name` char(30),
`c_preferred_cust_flag` char(1),
`c_birth_day` integer,
`c_birth_month` integer,
`c_birth_year` integer,
`c_birth_country` char(20),
`c_login` char(13),
`c_email_address` char(50),
`c_last_review_date_sk` bigint)
STORED AS PARQUET
LOCATION
's3a://prestodb-demo-databucket-CHANGE_ME/customer'
TBLPROPERTIES ('parquet.compression'='SNAPPY');
The threeCREATE EXTERNAL TABLE SQL statements are included in the sql/ directory: sql/hive_customer.sql, sql/hive_customer_address.sql, and sql/hive_customer_demographics.sql. The bucket name (shown in bold above), needs to be manually updated to your own bucket name in all three files before continuing.
Next, run the following hive commands to create the external tables in the Hive Metastore within the existing default schema/database.
hive --database default -f sql/hive_customer.sql
hive --database default -f sql/hive_customer_address.sql
hive --database default -f sql/hive_customer_demographics.sql
To confirm the tables were created successfully, we could use a variety of hive commands.
hive --database default -e "SHOW TABLES;"
hive --database default -e "DESCRIBE FORMATTED customer;"
hive --database default -e "SELECT * FROM customer LIMIT 5;"
Alternatively, you can also create the external table interactively from within Hive, using the hive command to access the CLI. Copy and paste the contents of the SQL files to the hive CLI. To exit hive use quit;.
Amazon S3 Data Source Setup
With the external tables created, we will now select all the data from each of the three tables in the TPC-DS data source and insert that data into the equivalent Hive tables. The physical data will be written to Amazon S3 as highly-efficient, columnar storage format, SNAPPY-compressed Apache Parquet files. Execute the following commands. I will explain why the customer_address table statements are a bit different, next.
# inserts 100,000 rows
presto-cli --execute """
INSERT INTO hive.default.customer
SELECT * FROM tpcds.sf1.customer;
"""
# inserts 50,000 rows across 52 partitions
presto-cli --execute """
INSERT INTO hive.default.customer_address
SELECT ca_address_sk, ca_address_id, ca_street_number,
ca_street_name, ca_street_type, ca_suite_number,
ca_city, ca_county, ca_zip, ca_country, ca_gmt_offset,
ca_location_type, ca_state
FROM tpcds.sf1.customer_address
ORDER BY ca_address_sk;
"""
# add new partitions in metastore
hive -e "MSCK REPAIR TABLE default.customer_address;"
# inserts 1,920,800 rows
presto-cli --execute """
INSERT INTO hive.default.customer_demographics
SELECT * FROM tpcds.sf1.customer_demographics;
"""
Confirm the data has been loaded into the correct S3 bucket locations and is in Parquet-format using the AWS Management Console or AWS CLI. Rest assured, the Parquet-format data is SNAPPY-compressed even though the S3 console incorrectly displays Compression as None. You can easily confirm the compression codec with a utility like parquet-tools.
Partitioned Tables
The customer_address table is unique in that it has been partitioned by the ca_state column. Partitioned tables are created using the PARTITIONED BY clause.
CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE `customer_address`(
`ca_address_sk` bigint,
`ca_address_id` char(16),
`ca_street_number` char(10),
`ca_street_name` char(60),
`ca_street_type` char(15),
`ca_suite_number` char(10),
`ca_city` varchar(60),
`ca_county` varchar(30),
`ca_zip` char(10),
`ca_country` char(20),
`ca_gmt_offset` double precision,
`ca_location_type` char(20)
)
PARTITIONED BY (`ca_state` char(2))
STORED AS PARQUET
LOCATION
's3a://prestodb-demo-databucket-CHANGE_ME/customer'
TBLPROPERTIES ('parquet.compression'='SNAPPY');
According to Apache Hive, a table can have one or more partition columns and a separate data directory is created for each distinct value combination in the partition columns. Since the data for the Hive tables are stored in Amazon S3, that means that when the data is written to the customer_address table, it is automatically separated into different S3 key prefixes based on the state. The data is physically “partitioned”.
Whenever add new partitions in S3, we need to run the MSCK REPAIR TABLE command to add that table’s new partitions to the Hive Metastore.
hive -e "MSCK REPAIR TABLE default.customer_address;"
In SQL, a predicate is a condition expression that evaluates to a Boolean value, either true or false. Defining the partitions aligned with the attributes that are frequently used in the conditions/filters (predicates) of the queries can significantly increase query efficiency. When we execute a query that uses an equality comparison condition, such as ca_state = 'TN', partitioning means the query will only work with a slice of the data in the corresponding ca_state=TN prefix key. There are 50,000 rows of data in the customer_address table, but only 1,418 rows (2.8% of the total data) in the ca_state=TN partition. With the additional advantage of Parquet format with SNAPPY compression, partitioning can significantly reduce query execution time.
Adding Data to RDS for PostgreSQL Instance
For the demonstration, we will also replicate the schema and data of the tpcds.sf1.customer_address table to the new RDS for PostgreSQL instance’s shipping database.
CREATE TABLE customer_address (
ca_address_sk bigint,
ca_address_id char(16),
ca_street_number char(10),
ca_street_name char(60),
ca_street_type char(15),
ca_suite_number char(10),
ca_city varchar(60),
ca_county varchar(30),
ca_state char(2),
ca_zip char(10),
ca_country char(20),
ca_gmt_offset double precision,
ca_location_type char(20)
);
Like Hive and Presto, we can create the table programmatically from the command line or interactively; I prefer the programmatic approach. Use the following psql command, we can create the customer_address table in the public schema of the shipping database.
psql -h ${POSTGRES_HOST} -p 5432 -d shipping -U presto \
-f sql/postgres_customer_address.sql
Now, to insert the data into the new PostgreSQL table, run the following presto-cli command.
# inserts 50,000 rows
presto-cli --execute """
INSERT INTO rds_postgresql.public.customer_address
SELECT * FROM tpcds.sf1.customer_address;
"""
To confirm that the data was imported properly, we can use a variety of commands.
-- Should be 50000 rows in table
psql -h ${POSTGRES_HOST} -p 5432 -d shipping -U presto \
-c "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM customer_address;"
psql -h ${POSTGRES_HOST} -p 5432 -d shipping -U presto \
-c "SELECT * FROM customer_address LIMIT 5;"
Alternatively, you could use the PostgreSQL client interactively by copying and pasting the contents of the sql/postgres_customer_address.sql file to the psql command prompt. To interact with PostgreSQL from the psql command prompt, use the following command.
psql -h ${POSTGRES_HOST} -p 5432 -d shipping -U presto
Use the \dt command to list the PostgreSQL tables and the \q command to exit the PostgreSQL client. We now have all the new data sources created and configured for Presto!
Interacting with Presto
Presto provides a web interface for monitoring and managing queries. The interface provides dashboard-like insights into the Presto Cluster and queries running on the cluster. The Presto UI is available on port 8080 using the public IPv4 address or the public IPv4 DNS.
There are several ways to interact with Presto, via the PrestoDB Sandbox. The post will demonstrate how to execute ad-hoc queries against Presto from an IDE using a JDBC connection and the Presto CLI. Other options include running queries against Presto from Java and Python applications, Tableau, or Apache Spark/PySpark.
Below, we see a query being run against Presto from JetBrains PyCharm, using a Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) connection. The advantage of using an IDE like JetBrains is having a single visual interface, including all the project files, multiple JDBC configurations, output results, and the ability to run multiple ad hoc queries.
Below, we see an example of configuring the Presto Data Source using the JDBC connection string, supplied in the CloudFormation stack Outputs tab.
Make sure to download and use the latest Presto JDBC driver JAR.
With JetBrains’ IDEs, we can even limit the databases/schemas displayed by the Data Source. This is helpful when we have multiple Presto catalogs configured, but we are only interested in certain data sources.
We can also run queries using the Presto CLI, three different ways. We can pass a SQL statement to the Presto CLI, pass a file containing a SQL statement to the Presto CLI, or work interactively from the Presto CLI. Below, we see a query being run, interactively from the Presto CLI.
As the query is running, we can observe the live Presto query statistics (not very user friendly in my terminal).
And finally, the view the query results.
Federated Queries
The example queries used in the demonstration and included in the project were mainly extracted from the scholarly article, Why You Should Run TPC-DS: A Workload Analysis, available as a PDF on the tpc.org website. I have modified the SQL queries to work with Presto.
In the first example, we will run the three versions of the same basic query statement. Version 1 of the query is not a federated query; it only queries a single data source. Version 2 of the query queries two different data sources. Finally, version 3 of the query queries three different data sources. Each of the three versions of the SQL statement should return the same results — 93 rows of data.
Version 1: Single Data Source
The first version of the query statement, sql/presto_query2.sql, is not a federated query. Each of the query’s four tables (catalog_returns, date_dim, customer, and customer_address) reference the TPC-DS data source, which came pre-installed with the PrestoDB Sandbox. Note table references on lines 11–13 and 41–42 are all associated with the tpcds.sf1 schema.
We will run each query non-interactively using the presto-cli. We will choose the sf1 (scale factor of 1) tpcds schema. According to Presto, every unit in the scale factor (sf1, sf10, sf100) corresponds to a gigabyte of data.
presto-cli \
--catalog tpcds \
--schema sf1 \
--file sql/presto_query2.sql \
--output-format ALIGNED \
--client-tags "presto_query2"
Below, we see the query results in the presto-cli.
Below, we see the first query running in Presto’s web interface.
Below, we see the first query’s results detailed in Presto’s web interface.
Version 2: Two Data Sources
In the second version of the query statement, sql/presto_query2_federated_v1.sql, two of the tables (catalog_returns and date_dim) reference the TPC-DS data source. The other two tables (customer and customer_address) now reference the Apache Hive Metastore for their schema and underlying data in Amazon S3. Note table references on lines 11 and 12, as opposed to lines 13, 41, and 42.
Again, run the query using the presto-cli.
presto-cli \
--catalog tpcds \
--schema sf1 \
--file sql/presto_query2_federated_v1.sql \
--output-format ALIGNED \
--client-tags "presto_query2_federated_v1"
Below, we see the second query’s results detailed in Presto’s web interface.
Even though the data is in two separate and physically different data sources, we can easily query it as though it were all in the same place.
Version 3: Three Data Sources
In the third version of the query statement, sql/presto_query2_federated_v2.sql, two of the tables (catalog_returns and date_dim) reference the TPC-DS data source. One of the tables (hive.default.customer) references the Apache Hive Metastore. The fourth table (rds_postgresql.public.customer_address) references the new RDS for PostgreSQL database instance. The underlying data is in Amazon S3. Note table references on lines 11 and 12, and on lines 13 and 41, as opposed to line 42.
Again, we have run the query using the presto-cli.
presto-cli \
--catalog tpcds \
--schema sf1 \
--file sql/presto_query2_federated_v2.sql \
--output-format ALIGNED \
--client-tags "presto_query2_federated_v2"
Below, we see the third query’s results detailed in Presto’s web interface.
Again, even though the data is in three separate and physically different data sources, we can easily query it as though it were all in the same place.
Additional Query Examples
The project contains several additional query statements, which I have extracted from Why You Should Run TPC-DS: A Workload Analysis and modified work with Presto and federate across multiple data sources.
# non-federated
presto-cli \
--catalog tpcds \
--schema sf1 \
--file sql/presto_query1.sql \
--output-format ALIGNED \
--client-tags "presto_query1"
# federated - two sources
presto-cli \
--catalog tpcds \
--schema sf1 \
--file sql/presto_query1_federated.sql \
--output-format ALIGNED \
--client-tags "presto_query1_federated"
# non-federated
presto-cli \
--catalog tpcds \
--schema sf1 \
--file sql/presto_query4.sql \
--output-format ALIGNED \
--client-tags "presto_query4"
# federated - three sources
presto-cli \
--catalog tpcds \
--schema sf1 \
--file sql/presto_query4_federated.sql \
--output-format ALIGNED \
--client-tags "presto_query4_federated"
# non-federated
presto-cli \
--catalog tpcds \
--schema sf1 \
--file sql/presto_query5.sql \
--output-format ALIGNED \
--client-tags "presto_query5"
Conclusion
In this post, we gained a better understanding of Presto using Ahana’s PrestoDB Sandbox product from AWS Marketplace. We learned how Presto queries data where it lives, including Apache Hive, Thrift, Kafka, Kudu, and Cassandra, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, etc. We also learned about Apache Hive and the Apache Hive Metastore, Apache Parquet file format, and how and why to partition Hive data in Amazon S3. Most importantly, we learned how to write federated queries that join multiple disparate data sources without having to move the data into a single monolithic data store.
This blog represents my own viewpoints and not of my employer, Amazon Web Services.
Streaming Analytics with Data Warehouses, using Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon QuickSight
Posted by Gary A. Stafford in AWS, Cloud, Python, Software Development, SQL on March 5, 2020
Introduction
Databases are ideal for storing and organizing data that requires a high volume of transaction-oriented query processing while maintaining data integrity. In contrast, data warehouses are designed for performing data analytics on vast amounts of data from one or more disparate sources. In our fast-paced, hyper-connected world, those sources often take the form of continuous streams of web application logs, e-commerce transactions, social media feeds, online gaming activities, financial trading transactions, and IoT sensor readings. Streaming data must be analyzed in near real-time, while often first requiring cleansing, transformation, and enrichment.
In the following post, we will demonstrate the use of Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon QuickSight to analyze streaming data. We will simulate time-series data, streaming from a set of IoT sensors to Kinesis Data Firehose. Kinesis Data Firehose will write the IoT data to an Amazon S3 Data Lake, where it will then be copied to Redshift in near real-time. In Amazon Redshift, we will enhance the streaming sensor data with data contained in the Redshift data warehouse, which has been gathered and denormalized into a star schema.
In Redshift, we can analyze the data, asking questions like, what is the min, max, mean, and median temperature over a given time period at each sensor location. Finally, we will use Amazon Quicksight to visualize the Redshift data using rich interactive charts and graphs, including displaying geospatial sensor data.
Featured Technologies
The following AWS services are discussed in this post.
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
According to Amazon, Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose can capture, transform, and load streaming data into data lakes, data stores, and analytics tools. Direct Kinesis Data Firehose integrations include Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Elasticsearch Service, and Splunk. Kinesis Data Firehose enables near real-time analytics with existing business intelligence (BI) tools and dashboards.
Amazon Redshift
According to Amazon, Amazon Redshift is the most popular and fastest cloud data warehouse. With Redshift, users can query petabytes of structured and semi-structured data across your data warehouse and data lake using standard SQL. Redshift allows users to query and export data to and from data lakes. Redshift can federate queries of live data from Redshift, as well as across one or more relational databases.
Amazon Redshift Spectrum
According to Amazon, Amazon Redshift Spectrum can efficiently query and retrieve structured and semistructured data from files in Amazon S3 without having to load the data into Amazon Redshift tables. Redshift Spectrum tables are created by defining the structure for data files and registering them as tables in an external data catalog. The external data catalog can be AWS Glue or an Apache Hive metastore. While Redshift Spectrum is an alternative to copying the data into Redshift for analysis, we will not be using Redshift Spectrum in this post.
Amazon QuickSight
According to Amazon, Amazon QuickSight is a fully managed business intelligence service that makes it easy to deliver insights to everyone in an organization. QuickSight lets users easily create and publish rich, interactive dashboards that include Amazon QuickSight ML Insights. Dashboards can then be accessed from any device and embedded into applications, portals, and websites.
What is a Data Warehouse?
According to Amazon, a data warehouse is a central repository of information that can be analyzed to make better-informed decisions. Data flows into a data warehouse from transactional systems, relational databases, and other sources, typically on a regular cadence. Business analysts, data scientists, and decision-makers access the data through business intelligence tools, SQL clients, and other analytics applications.
Demonstration
Source Code
All the source code for this post can be found on GitHub. Use the following command to git clone a local copy of the project.
| git clone \ | |
| –branch master –single-branch –depth 1 –no-tags \ | |
| https://github.com/garystafford/kinesis-redshift-streaming-demo.git |
CloudFormation
Use the two AWS CloudFormation templates, included in the project, to build two CloudFormation stacks. Please review the two templates and understand the costs of the resources before continuing.
The first CloudFormation template, redshift.yml, provisions a new Amazon VPC with associated network and security resources, a single-node Redshift cluster, and two S3 buckets.
The second CloudFormation template, kinesis-firehose.yml, provisions an Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream, associated IAM Policy and Role, and an Amazon CloudWatch log group and two log streams.
Change the REDSHIFT_PASSWORD value to ensure your security. Optionally, change the REDSHIFT_USERNAME value. Make sure that the first stack completes successfully, before creating the second stack.
| export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1 | |
| REDSHIFT_USERNAME=awsuser | |
| REDSHIFT_PASSWORD=5up3r53cr3tPa55w0rd | |
| # Create resources | |
| aws cloudformation create-stack \ | |
| –stack-name redshift-stack \ | |
| –template-body file://cloudformation/redshift.yml \ | |
| –parameters ParameterKey=MasterUsername,ParameterValue=${REDSHIFT_USERNAME} \ | |
| ParameterKey=MasterUserPassword,ParameterValue=${REDSHIFT_PASSWORD} \ | |
| ParameterKey=InboundTraffic,ParameterValue=$(curl ifconfig.me -s)/32 \ | |
| –capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM | |
| # Wait for first stack to complete | |
| aws cloudformation create-stack \ | |
| –stack-name kinesis-firehose-stack \ | |
| –template-body file://cloudformation/kinesis-firehose.yml \ | |
| –parameters ParameterKey=MasterUserPassword,ParameterValue=${REDSHIFT_PASSWORD} \ | |
| –capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM |
Review AWS Resources
To confirm all the AWS resources were created correctly, use the AWS Management Console.
Kinesis Data Firehose
In the Amazon Kinesis Dashboard, you should see the new Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream, redshift-delivery-stream.
The Details tab of the new Amazon Kinesis Firehose delivery stream should look similar to the following. Note the IAM Role, FirehoseDeliveryRole, which was created and associated with the delivery stream by CloudFormation.
We are not performing any transformations of the incoming messages. Note the new S3 bucket that was created and associated with the stream by CloudFormation. The bucket name was randomly generated. This bucket is where the incoming messages will be written.
Note the buffer conditions of 1 MB and 60 seconds. Whenever the buffer of incoming messages is greater than 1 MB or the time exceeds 60 seconds, the messages are written in JSON format, using GZIP compression, to S3. These are the minimal buffer conditions, and as close to real-time streaming to Redshift as we can get.
Note the COPY command, which is used to copy the messages from S3 to the message table in Amazon Redshift. Kinesis uses the IAM Role, ClusterPermissionsRole, created by CloudFormation, for credentials. We are using a Manifest to copy the data to Redshift from S3. According to Amazon, a Manifest ensures that the COPY command loads all of the required files, and only the required files, for a data load. The Manifests are automatically generated and managed by the Kinesis Firehose delivery stream.
Redshift Cluster
In the Amazon Redshift Console, you should see a new single-node Redshift cluster consisting of one Redshift dc2.large Dense Compute node type.
Note the new VPC, Subnet, and VPC Security Group created by CloudFormation. Also, observe that the Redshift cluster is publicly accessible from outside the new VPC.
Redshift Ingress Rules
The single-node Redshift cluster is assigned to an AWS Availability Zone in the US East (N. Virginia) us-east-1 AWS Region. The cluster is associated with a VPC Security Group. The Security Group contains three inbound rules, all for Redshift port 5439. The IP addresses associated with the three inbound rules provide access to the following: 1) a /27 CIDR block for Amazon QuickSight in us-east-1, a /27 CIDR block for Amazon Kinesis Firehose in us-east-1, and to you, a /32 CIDR block with your current IP address. If your IP address changes or you do not use the us-east-1 Region, you will need to change one or all of these IP addresses. The list of Kinesis Firehose IP addresses is here. The list of QuickSight IP addresses is here.
If you cannot connect to Redshift from your local SQL client, most often, your IP address has changed and is incorrect in the Security Group’s inbound rule.
Redshift SQL Client
You can choose to use the Redshift Query Editor to interact with Redshift or use a third-party SQL client for greater flexibility. To access the Redshift Query Editor, use the user credentials specified in the redshift.yml CloudFormation template.
There is a lot of useful functionality in the Redshift Console and within the Redshift Query Editor. However, a notable limitation of the Redshift Query Editor, in my opinion, is the inability to execute multiple SQL statements at the same time. Whereas, most SQL clients allow multiple SQL queries to be executed at the same time.
I prefer to use JetBrains PyCharm IDE. PyCharm has out-of-the-box integration with Redshift. Using PyCharm, I can edit the project’s Python, SQL, AWS CLI shell, and CloudFormation code, all from within PyCharm.
If you use any of the common SQL clients, you will need to set-up a JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) or ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) connection to Redshift. The ODBC and JDBC connection strings can be found in the Redshift cluster’s Properties tab or in the Outputs tab from the CloudFormation stack, redshift-stack.
You will also need the Redshift database username and password you included in the aws cloudformation create-stack AWS CLI command you executed previously. Below, we see PyCharm’s Project Data Sources window containing a new data source for the Redshift dev database.
Database Schema and Tables
When CloudFormation created the Redshift cluster, it also created a new database, dev. Using the Redshift Query Editor or your SQL client of choice, execute the following series of SQL commands to create a new database schema, sensor, and six tables in the sensor schema.
| — Create new schema in Redshift DB | |
| DROP SCHEMA IF EXISTS sensor CASCADE; | |
| CREATE SCHEMA sensor; | |
| SET search_path = sensor; | |
| — Create (6) tables in Redshift DB | |
| CREATE TABLE message — streaming data table | |
| ( | |
| id BIGINT IDENTITY (1, 1), — message id | |
| guid VARCHAR(36) NOT NULL, — device guid | |
| ts BIGINT NOT NULL DISTKEY SORTKEY, — epoch in seconds | |
| temp NUMERIC(5, 2) NOT NULL, — temperature reading | |
| created TIMESTAMP DEFAULT ('now'::text)::timestamp with time zone — row created at | |
| ); | |
| CREATE TABLE location — dimension table | |
| ( | |
| id INTEGER NOT NULL DISTKEY SORTKEY, — location id | |
| long NUMERIC(10, 7) NOT NULL, — longitude | |
| lat NUMERIC(10, 7) NOT NULL, — latitude | |
| description VARCHAR(256) — location description | |
| ); | |
| CREATE TABLE history — dimension table | |
| ( | |
| id INTEGER NOT NULL DISTKEY SORTKEY, — history id | |
| serviced BIGINT NOT NULL, — service date | |
| action VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL, — INSTALLED, CALIBRATED, FIRMWARE UPGRADED, DECOMMISSIONED, OTHER | |
| technician_id INTEGER NOT NULL, — technician id | |
| notes VARCHAR(256) — notes | |
| ); | |
| CREATE TABLE sensor — dimension table | |
| ( | |
| id INTEGER NOT NULL DISTKEY SORTKEY, — sensor id | |
| guid VARCHAR(36) NOT NULL, — device guid | |
| mac VARCHAR(18) NOT NULL, — mac address | |
| sku VARCHAR(18) NOT NULL, — product sku | |
| upc VARCHAR(12) NOT NULL, — product upc | |
| active BOOLEAN DEFAULT TRUE, —active status | |
| notes VARCHAR(256) — notes | |
| ); | |
| CREATE TABLE manufacturer — dimension table | |
| ( | |
| id INTEGER NOT NULL DISTKEY SORTKEY, — manufacturer id | |
| name VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, — company name | |
| website VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, — company website | |
| notes VARCHAR(256) — notes | |
| ); | |
| CREATE TABLE sensors — fact table | |
| ( | |
| id BIGINT IDENTITY (1, 1) DISTKEY SORTKEY, — fact id | |
| sensor_id INTEGER NOT NULL, — sensor id | |
| manufacturer_id INTEGER NOT NULL, — manufacturer id | |
| location_id INTEGER NOT NULL, — location id | |
| history_id BIGINT NOT NULL, — history id | |
| message_guid VARCHAR(36) NOT NULL — sensor guid | |
| ); |
Star Schema
The tables represent denormalized data, taken from one or more relational database sources. The tables form a star schema. The star schema is widely used to develop data warehouses. The star schema consists of one or more fact tables referencing any number of dimension tables. The location, manufacturer, sensor, and history tables are dimension tables. The sensors table is a fact table.
In the diagram below, the foreign key relationships are virtual, not physical. The diagram was created using PyCharm’s schema visualization tool. Note the schema’s star shape. The message table is where the streaming IoT data will eventually be written. The message table is related to the sensors fact table through the common guid field.
Sample Data to S3
Next, copy the sample data, included in the project, to the S3 data bucket created with CloudFormation. Each CSV-formatted data file corresponds to one of the tables we previously created. Since the bucket name is semi-random, we can use the AWS CLI and jq to get the bucket name, then use it to perform the copy commands.
| # Get data bucket name | |
| DATA_BUCKET=$(aws cloudformation describe-stacks \ | |
| –stack-name redshift-stack \ | |
| | jq -r '.Stacks[].Outputs[] | select(.OutputKey == "DataBucket") | .OutputValue') | |
| echo $DATA_BUCKET | |
| # Copy data | |
| aws s3 cp data/history.csv s3://${DATA_BUCKET}/history/history.csv | |
| aws s3 cp data/location.csv s3://${DATA_BUCKET}/location/location.csv | |
| aws s3 cp data/manufacturer.csv s3://${DATA_BUCKET}/manufacturer/manufacturer.csv | |
| aws s3 cp data/sensor.csv s3://${DATA_BUCKET}/sensor/sensor.csv | |
| aws s3 cp data/sensors.csv s3://${DATA_BUCKET}/sensors/sensors.csv |
The output from the AWS CLI should look similar to the following.
Sample Data to Redshift
Whereas a relational database, such as Amazon RDS is designed for online transaction processing (OLTP), Amazon Redshift is designed for online analytic processing (OLAP) and business intelligence applications. To write data to Redshift we typically use the COPY command versus frequent, individual INSERT statements, as with OLTP, which would be prohibitively slow. According to Amazon, the Redshift COPY command leverages the Amazon Redshift massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture to read and load data in parallel from files on Amazon S3, from a DynamoDB table, or from text output from one or more remote hosts.
In the following series of SQL statements, replace the placeholder, your_bucket_name, in five places with your S3 data bucket name. The bucket name will start with the prefix, redshift-stack-databucket. The bucket name can be found in the Outputs tab of the CloudFormation stack, redshift-stack. Next, replace the placeholder, cluster_permissions_role_arn, with the ARN (Amazon Resource Name) of the ClusterPermissionsRole. The ARN is formatted as follows, arn:aws:iam::your-account-id:role/ClusterPermissionsRole. The ARN can be found in the Outputs tab of the CloudFormation stack, redshift-stack.
Using the Redshift Query Editor or your SQL client of choice, execute the SQL statements to copy the sample data from S3 to each of the corresponding tables in the Redshift dev database. The TRUNCATE commands guarantee there is no previous sample data present in the tables.
| — ** MUST FIRST CHANGE your_bucket_name and cluster_permissions_role_arn ** | |
| — sensor schema | |
| SET search_path = sensor; | |
| — Copy sample data to tables from S3 | |
| TRUNCATE TABLE history; | |
| COPY history (id, serviced, action, technician_id, notes) | |
| FROM 's3://your_bucket_name/history/' | |
| CREDENTIALS 'aws_iam_role=cluster_permissions_role_arn' | |
| CSV IGNOREHEADER 1; | |
| TRUNCATE TABLE location; | |
| COPY location (id, long, lat, description) | |
| FROM 's3://your_bucket_name/location/' | |
| CREDENTIALS 'aws_iam_role=cluster_permissions_role_arn' | |
| CSV IGNOREHEADER 1; | |
| TRUNCATE TABLE sensor; | |
| COPY sensor (id, guid, mac, sku, upc, active, notes) | |
| FROM 's3://your_bucket_name/sensor/' | |
| CREDENTIALS 'aws_iam_role=cluster_permissions_role_arn' | |
| CSV IGNOREHEADER 1; | |
| TRUNCATE TABLE manufacturer; | |
| COPY manufacturer (id, name, website, notes) | |
| FROM 's3://your_bucket_name/manufacturer/' | |
| CREDENTIALS 'aws_iam_role=cluster_permissions_role_arn' | |
| CSV IGNOREHEADER 1; | |
| TRUNCATE TABLE sensors; | |
| COPY sensors (sensor_id, manufacturer_id, location_id, history_id, message_guid) | |
| FROM 's3://your_bucket_name/sensors/' | |
| CREDENTIALS 'aws_iam_role=cluster_permissions_role_arn' | |
| CSV IGNOREHEADER 1; | |
| SELECT COUNT(*) FROM history; — 30 | |
| SELECT COUNT(*) FROM location; — 6 | |
| SELECT COUNT(*) FROM sensor; — 6 | |
| SELECT COUNT(*) FROM manufacturer; —1 | |
| SELECT COUNT(*) FROM sensors; — 30 |
Database Views
Next, create four Redshift database Views. These views may be used to analyze the data in Redshift, and later, in Amazon QuickSight.
- sensor_msg_detail: Returns aggregated sensor details, using the
sensorsfact table and all five dimension tables in a SQL Join. - sensor_msg_count: Returns the number of messages received by Redshift, for each sensor.
- sensor_avg_temp: Returns the average temperature from each sensor, based on all the messages received from each sensor.
- sensor_avg_temp_current: View is identical for the previous view but limited to the last 30 minutes.
Using the Redshift Query Editor or your SQL client of choice, execute the following series of SQL statements.
| — sensor schema | |
| SET search_path = sensor; | |
| — View 1: Sensor details | |
| DROP VIEW IF EXISTS sensor_msg_detail; | |
| CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW sensor_msg_detail AS | |
| SELECT ('1970-01-01'::date + e.ts * interval '1 second') AS recorded, | |
| e.temp, | |
| s.guid, | |
| s.sku, | |
| s.mac, | |
| l.lat, | |
| l.long, | |
| l.description AS location, | |
| ('1970-01-01'::date + h.serviced * interval '1 second') AS installed, | |
| e.created AS redshift | |
| FROM sensors f | |
| INNER JOIN sensor s ON (f.sensor_id = s.id) | |
| INNER JOIN history h ON (f.history_id = h.id) | |
| INNER JOIN location l ON (f.location_id = l.id) | |
| INNER JOIN manufacturer m ON (f.manufacturer_id = m.id) | |
| INNER JOIN message e ON (f.message_guid = e.guid) | |
| WHERE s.active IS TRUE | |
| AND h.action = 'INSTALLED' | |
| ORDER BY f.id; | |
| — View 2: Message count per sensor | |
| DROP VIEW IF EXISTS sensor_msg_count; | |
| CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW sensor_msg_count AS | |
| SELECT count(e.temp) AS msg_count, | |
| s.guid, | |
| l.lat, | |
| l.long, | |
| l.description AS location | |
| FROM sensors f | |
| INNER JOIN sensor s ON (f.sensor_id = s.id) | |
| INNER JOIN history h ON (f.history_id = h.id) | |
| INNER JOIN location l ON (f.location_id = l.id) | |
| INNER JOIN message e ON (f.message_guid = e.guid) | |
| WHERE s.active IS TRUE | |
| AND h.action = 'INSTALLED' | |
| GROUP BY s.guid, l.description, l.lat, l.long | |
| ORDER BY msg_count, s.guid; | |
| — View 3: Average temperature per sensor (all data) | |
| DROP VIEW IF EXISTS sensor_avg_temp; | |
| CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW sensor_avg_temp AS | |
| SELECT avg(e.temp) AS avg_temp, | |
| count(s.guid) AS msg_count, | |
| s.guid, | |
| l.lat, | |
| l.long, | |
| l.description AS location | |
| FROM sensors f | |
| INNER JOIN sensor s ON (f.sensor_id = s.id) | |
| INNER JOIN history h ON (f.history_id = h.id) | |
| INNER JOIN location l ON (f.location_id = l.id) | |
| INNER JOIN message e ON (f.message_guid = e.guid) | |
| WHERE s.active IS TRUE | |
| AND h.action = 'INSTALLED' | |
| GROUP BY s.guid, l.description, l.lat, l.long | |
| ORDER BY avg_temp, s.guid; | |
| — View 4: Average temperature per sensor (last 30 minutes) | |
| DROP VIEW IF EXISTS sensor_avg_temp_current; | |
| CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW sensor_avg_temp_current AS | |
| SELECT avg(e.temp) AS avg_temp, | |
| count(s.guid) AS msg_count, | |
| s.guid, | |
| l.lat, | |
| l.long, | |
| l.description AS location | |
| FROM sensors f | |
| INNER JOIN sensor s ON (f.sensor_id = s.id) | |
| INNER JOIN history h ON (f.history_id = h.id) | |
| INNER JOIN location l ON (f.location_id = l.id) | |
| INNER JOIN (SELECT ('1970-01-01'::date + ts * interval '1 second') AS recorded_time, | |
| guid, | |
| temp | |
| FROM message | |
| WHERE DATEDIFF(minute, recorded_time, GETDATE()) <= 30) e ON (f.message_guid = e.guid) | |
| WHERE s.active IS TRUE | |
| AND h.action = 'INSTALLED' | |
| GROUP BY s.guid, l.description, l.lat, l.long | |
| ORDER BY avg_temp, s.guid; |
At this point, you should have a total of six tables and four views in the sensor schema of the dev database in Redshift.
Test the System
With all the necessary AWS resources and Redshift database objects created and sample data in the Redshift database, we can test the system. The included Python script, kinesis_put_test_msg.py, will generate a single test message and send it to Kinesis Data Firehose. If everything is working, the message should be delivered from Kinesis Data Firehose to S3, then copied to Redshift, and appear in the message table.
Install the required Python packages and then execute the Python script.
| # Install required Python packages | |
| python3 -m pip install –user -r scripts/requirements.txt | |
| # Set default AWS Region for script | |
| export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1 | |
| # Execute script in foreground | |
| python3 ./scripts/kinesis_put_test_msg.py |
Run the following SQL query to confirm the record is in the message table of the dev database. It will take at least one minute for the message to appear in Redshift.
| SELECT COUNT(*) FROM message; |
Once the message is confirmed to be present in the message table, delete the record by truncating the table.
| TRUNCATE TABLE message; |
Streaming Data
Assuming the test message worked, we can proceed with simulating the streaming IoT sensor data. The included Python script, kinesis_put_streaming_data.py, creates six concurrent threads, representing six temperature sensors.
| #!/usr/bin/env python3 | |
| # Simulated multiple streaming time-series iot sensor data | |
| # Author: Gary A. Stafford | |
| # Date: Revised October 2020 | |
| import json | |
| import random | |
| from datetime import datetime | |
| import boto3 | |
| import time as tm | |
| import numpy as np | |
| import threading | |
| STREAM_NAME = 'redshift-delivery-stream' | |
| client = boto3.client('firehose') | |
| class MyThread(threading.Thread): | |
| def __init__(self, thread_id, sensor_guid, temp_max): | |
| threading.Thread.__init__(self) | |
| self.thread_id = thread_id | |
| self.sensor_id = sensor_guid | |
| self.temp_max = temp_max | |
| def run(self): | |
| print("Starting Thread: " + str(self.thread_id)) | |
| self.create_data() | |
| print("Exiting Thread: " + str(self.thread_id)) | |
| def create_data(self): | |
| start = 0 | |
| stop = 20 | |
| step = 0.1 # step size (e.g 0 to 20, step .1 = 200 steps in cycle) | |
| repeat = 2 # how many times to repeat cycle | |
| freq = 60 # frequency of temperature reading in seconds | |
| max_range = int(stop * (1 / step)) | |
| time = np.arange(start, stop, step) | |
| amplitude = np.sin(time) | |
| for x in range(0, repeat): | |
| for y in range(0, max_range): | |
| temperature = round((((amplitude[y] + 1.0) * self.temp_max) + random.uniform(–5, 5)) + 60, 2) | |
| payload = { | |
| 'guid': self.sensor_id, | |
| 'ts': int(datetime.now().strftime('%s')), | |
| 'temp': temperature | |
| } | |
| print(json.dumps(payload)) | |
| self.send_to_kinesis(payload) | |
| tm.sleep(freq) | |
| @staticmethod | |
| def send_to_kinesis(payload): | |
| _ = client.put_record( | |
| DeliveryStreamName=STREAM_NAME, | |
| Record={ | |
| 'Data': json.dumps(payload) | |
| } | |
| ) | |
| def main(): | |
| sensor_guids = [ | |
| "03e39872-e105-4be4-83c0-9ade818465dc", | |
| "fa565921-fddd-4bfb-a7fd-d617f816df4b", | |
| "d120422d-5789-435d-9dc6-73d8489b04c2", | |
| "93238559-4d55-4b2a-bdcb-6aa3be0f3908", | |
| "dbc05806-6872-4f0a-aca2-f794cc39bd9b", | |
| "f9ade639-f936-4954-aa5a-1f2ed86c9bcf" | |
| ] | |
| timeout = 300 # arbitrarily offset the start of threads (60 / 5 = 12) | |
| # Create new threads | |
| thread1 = MyThread(1, sensor_guids[0], 25) | |
| thread2 = MyThread(2, sensor_guids[1], 10) | |
| thread3 = MyThread(3, sensor_guids[2], 7) | |
| thread4 = MyThread(4, sensor_guids[3], 30) | |
| thread5 = MyThread(5, sensor_guids[4], 5) | |
| thread6 = MyThread(6, sensor_guids[5], 12) | |
| # Start new threads | |
| thread1.start() | |
| tm.sleep(timeout * 1) | |
| thread2.start() | |
| tm.sleep(timeout * 2) | |
| thread3.start() | |
| tm.sleep(timeout * 1) | |
| thread4.start() | |
| tm.sleep(timeout * 3) | |
| thread5.start() | |
| tm.sleep(timeout * 2) | |
| thread6.start() | |
| # Wait for threads to terminate | |
| thread1.join() | |
| thread2.join() | |
| thread3.join() | |
| thread4.join() | |
| thread5.join() | |
| thread6.join() | |
| print("Exiting Main Thread") | |
| if __name__ == '__main__': | |
| main() |
The simulated data uses an algorithm that follows an oscillating sine wave or sinusoid, representing rising and falling temperatures. In the script, I have configured each thread to start with an arbitrary offset to add some randomness to the simulated data.
The variables within the script can be adjusted to shorten or lengthen the time it takes to stream the simulated data. By default, each of the six threads creates 400 messages per sensor, in one-minute increments. Including the offset start of each proceeding thread, the total runtime of the script is about 7.5 hours to generate 2,400 simulated IoT sensor temperature readings and push to Kinesis Data Firehose. Make sure you can guarantee you will maintain a connection to the Internet for the entire runtime of the script. I normally run the script in the background, from a small EC2 instance.
To use the Python script, execute either of the two following commands. Using the first command will run the script in the foreground. Using the second command will run the script in the background.
| # Install required Python packages | |
| python3 -m pip install –user -r scripts/requirements.txt | |
| # Set default AWS Region for script | |
| export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1 | |
| # Option #1: Execute script in foreground | |
| python3 ./scripts/kinesis_put_streaming_data.py | |
| # Option #2: execute script in background | |
| nohup python3 -u ./scripts/kinesis_put_streaming_data.py > output.log 2>&1 </dev/null & | |
| # Check that the process is running | |
| ps -aux | grep 'python3 -u ./scripts/kinesis_put_streaming_data.py' | |
| # Wait 1-2 minutes, then check output to confirm script is working | |
| cat output.log |
Viewing the output.log file, you should see messages being generated on each thread and sent to Kinesis Data Firehose. Each message contains the GUID of the sensor, a timestamp, and a temperature reading.
The messages are sent to Kinesis Data Firehose, which in turn writes the messages to S3. The messages are written in JSON format using GZIP compression. Below, we see an example of the GZIP compressed JSON files in S3. The JSON files are partitioned by year, month, day, and hour.
Confirm Data Streaming to Redshift
From the Amazon Kinesis Firehose Console Metrics tab, you should see incoming messages flowing to S3 and on to Redshift.
Executing the following SQL query should show an increasing number of messages.
| SELECT COUNT(*) FROM message; |
How Near Real-time?
Earlier, we saw how the Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream was configured to buffer data at the rate of 1 MB or 60 seconds. Whenever the buffer of incoming messages is greater than 1 MB or the time exceeds 60 seconds, the messages are written to S3. Each record in the message table has two timestamps. The first timestamp, ts, is when the temperature reading was recorded. The second timestamp, created, is when the message was written to Redshift, using the COPY command. We can calculate the delta in seconds between the two timestamps using the following SQL query in Redshift.
| SELECT ('1970-01-01'::date + ts * interval '1 second') AS recorded_time, | |
| created AS redshift_time, | |
| DATEDIFF(seconds, recorded_time, redshift_time) AS diff_seconds | |
| FROM message | |
| ORDER BY diff_seconds; |
Using the results of the Redshift query, we can visualize the results in Amazon QuickSight. In my own tests, we see that for 2,400 messages, over approximately 7.5 hours, the minimum delay was 1 second, and a maximum delay was 64 seconds. Hence, near real-time, in this case, is about one minute or less, with an average latency of roughly 30 seconds.
Analyzing the Data with Redshift
I suggest waiting at least thirty minutes for a significant number of messages copied into Redshift. With the data streaming into Redshift, execute each of the database views we created earlier. You should see the streaming message data, joined to the existing static data in Redshift. As data continues to stream into Redshift, the views will display different results based on the current message table contents.
Here, we see the first ten results of the sensor_msg_detail view.
| recorded | temp | guid | sku | mac | lat | long | location | installed | redshift | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-03-04 03:31:59.000000 | 105.56 | 03e39872-e105-4be4-83c0-9ade818465dc | PR49-24A | 8e:fa:46:09:14:b2 | 37.7068476 | -122.4191599 | Research Lab #2203 | 2018-01-31 12:00:00.000000 | 2020-03-04 03:33:01.580147 | |
| 2020-03-04 03:29:59.000000 | 95.93 | 03e39872-e105-4be4-83c0-9ade818465dc | PR49-24A | 8e:fa:46:09:14:b2 | 37.7068476 | -122.4191599 | Research Lab #2203 | 2018-01-31 12:00:00.000000 | 2020-03-04 03:31:01.388887 | |
| 2020-03-04 03:26:58.000000 | 91.93 | 03e39872-e105-4be4-83c0-9ade818465dc | PR49-24A | 8e:fa:46:09:14:b2 | 37.7068476 | -122.4191599 | Research Lab #2203 | 2018-01-31 12:00:00.000000 | 2020-03-04 03:28:01.099796 | |
| 2020-03-04 03:25:58.000000 | 88.70 | 03e39872-e105-4be4-83c0-9ade818465dc | PR49-24A | 8e:fa:46:09:14:b2 | 37.7068476 | -122.4191599 | Research Lab #2203 | 2018-01-31 12:00:00.000000 | 2020-03-04 03:26:00.196113 | |
| 2020-03-04 03:22:58.000000 | 87.65 | 03e39872-e105-4be4-83c0-9ade818465dc | PR49-24A | 8e:fa:46:09:14:b2 | 37.7068476 | -122.4191599 | Research Lab #2203 | 2018-01-31 12:00:00.000000 | 2020-03-04 03:23:01.558514 | |
| 2020-03-04 03:20:58.000000 | 77.35 | 03e39872-e105-4be4-83c0-9ade818465dc | PR49-24A | 8e:fa:46:09:14:b2 | 37.7068476 | -122.4191599 | Research Lab #2203 | 2018-01-31 12:00:00.000000 | 2020-03-04 03:21:00.691347 | |
| 2020-03-04 03:16:57.000000 | 71.84 | 03e39872-e105-4be4-83c0-9ade818465dc | PR49-24A | 8e:fa:46:09:14:b2 | 37.7068476 | -122.4191599 | Research Lab #2203 | 2018-01-31 12:00:00.000000 | 2020-03-04 03:17:59.307510 | |
| 2020-03-04 03:15:57.000000 | 72.35 | 03e39872-e105-4be4-83c0-9ade818465dc | PR49-24A | 8e:fa:46:09:14:b2 | 37.7068476 | -122.4191599 | Research Lab #2203 | 2018-01-31 12:00:00.000000 | 2020-03-04 03:15:59.813656 | |
| 2020-03-04 03:14:57.000000 | 67.95 | 03e39872-e105-4be4-83c0-9ade818465dc | PR49-24A | 8e:fa:46:09:14:b2 | 37.7068476 | -122.4191599 | Research Lab #2203 | 2018-01-31 12:00:00.000000 | 2020-03-04 03:15:59.813656 |
Next, we see the results of the sensor_avg_temp view.
| avg_temp | guid | lat | long | location | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 65.25 | dbc05806-6872-4f0a-aca2-f794cc39bd9b | 37.7066541 | -122.4181399 | Wafer Inspection Lab #0210A | |
| 67.23 | d120422d-5789-435d-9dc6-73d8489b04c2 | 37.7072686 | -122.4187016 | Zone 4 Wafer Processing Area B3 | |
| 70.23 | fa565921-fddd-4bfb-a7fd-d617f816df4b | 37.7071763 | -122.4190397 | Research Lab #2209 | |
| 72.22 | f9ade639-f936-4954-aa5a-1f2ed86c9bcf | 37.7067618 | -122.4186191 | Wafer Inspection Lab #0211C | |
| 85.48 | 03e39872-e105-4be4-83c0-9ade818465dc | 37.7068476 | -122.4191599 | Research Lab #2203 | |
| 90.69 | 93238559-4d55-4b2a-bdcb-6aa3be0f3908 | 37.7070334 | -122.4184393 | Zone 2 Semiconductor Assembly Area A2 |
Amazon QuickSight
In a recent post, Getting Started with Data Analysis on AWS using AWS Glue, Amazon Athena, and QuickSight: Part 2, I detailed getting started with Amazon QuickSight. In this post, I will assume you are familiar with QuickSight.
Amazon recently added a full set of aws quicksight APIs for interacting with QuickSight. Though, for this part of the demonstration, we will be working directly in the Amazon QuickSight Console, as opposed to the AWS CLI, AWS CDK, or CloudFormation.
Redshift Data Sets
To visualize the data from Amazon Redshift, we start by creating Data Sets in QuickSight. QuickSight supports a large number of data sources for creating data sets. We will use the Redshift data source. If you recall, we added an inbound rule for QuickSight, allowing us to connect to our Redshift cluster in us-east-1.
We will select the sensor schema, which is where the tables and views for this demonstration are located.
We can choose any of the tables or views in the Redshift dev database that we want to use for visualization.
Below, we see examples of two new data sets, shown in the QuickSight Data Prep Console. Note how QuickSight automatically recognizes field types, including dates, latitude, and longitude.
Visualizations
Using the data sets, QuickSight allows us to create a wide number of rich visualizations. Below, we see the simulated time-series data from the six temperature sensors.
Next, we see an example of QuickSight’s ability to show geospatial data. The Map shows the location of each sensor and the average temperature recorded by that sensor.
Cleaning Up
To remove the resources created for this post, use the following series of AWS CLI commands.
| # Get data bucket name | |
| DATA_BUCKET=$(aws cloudformation describe-stacks \ | |
| –stack-name redshift-stack \ | |
| | jq -r '.Stacks[].Outputs[] | select(.OutputKey == "DataBucket") | .OutputValue') | |
| echo ${DATA_BUCKET} | |
| # Get log bucket name | |
| LOG_BUCKET=$(aws cloudformation describe-stacks \ | |
| –stack-name redshift-stack \ | |
| | jq -r '.Stacks[].Outputs[] | select(.OutputKey == "LogBucket") | .OutputValue') | |
| echo ${LOG_BUCKET} | |
| # Delete demonstration resources | |
| python3 ./scripts/delete_buckets.py | |
| aws cloudformation delete-stack –stack-name kinesis-firehose-stack | |
| # Wait for first stack to be deleted | |
| aws cloudformation delete-stack –stack-name redshift-stack |
Conclusion
In this brief post, we have learned how streaming data can be analyzed in near real-time, in Amazon Redshift, using Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose. Further, we explored how the results of those analyses can be visualized in Amazon QuickSight. For customers that depend on a data warehouse for data analytics, but who also have streaming data sources, the use of Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose or Amazon Redshift Spectrum is an excellent choice.
This blog represents my own viewpoints and not of my employer, Amazon Web Services.
Getting Started with Data Analysis on AWS using AWS Glue, Amazon Athena, and QuickSight: Part 2
Posted by Gary A. Stafford in AWS, Big Data, Cloud, Software Development, SQL on January 14, 2020
Introduction
In part one, we learned how to ingest, transform, and enrich raw, semi-structured data, in multiple formats, using Amazon S3, AWS Glue, Amazon Athena, and AWS Lambda. We built an S3-based data lake and learned how AWS leverages open-source technologies, including Presto, Apache Hive, and Apache Parquet. In part two of this post, we will use the transformed and enriched data sources, stored in the data lake, to create compelling visualizations using Amazon QuickSight.
High-level AWS architecture diagram of the demonstration.
Background
If you recall the demonstration from part one of the post, we had adopted the persona of a large, US-based electric energy provider. The energy provider had developed and sold its next-generation Smart Electrical Monitoring Hub (Smart Hub) to residential customers. Customers can analyze their electrical usage with a fine level of granularity, per device and over time. The goal of the Smart Hub is to enable the customers, using data, to reduce their electrical costs. The provider benefits from a reduction in load on the existing electrical grid and a better distribution of daily electrical load as customers shift usage to off-peak times to save money.
Data Visualization and BI
The data analysis process in the demonstration was divided into four logical stages: 1) Raw Data Ingestion, 2) Data Transformation, 3) Data Enrichment, and 4) Data Visualization and Business Intelligence (BI).
Full data analysis workflow diagram (click to enlarge…)
In the final, Data Visualization and Business Intelligence (BI) stage, the enriched data is presented and analyzed. There are many enterprise-grade services available for data visualization and business intelligence, which integrate with Amazon Athena. Amazon services include Amazon QuickSight, Amazon EMR, and Amazon SageMaker. Third-party solutions from AWS Partners, many available on the AWS Marketplace, include Tableau, Looker, Sisense, and Domo.
In this demonstration, we will focus on Amazon QuickSight. Amazon QuickSight is a fully managed business intelligence (BI) service. QuickSight lets you create and publish interactive dashboards that include ML Insights. Dashboards can be accessed from any device, and embedded into your applications, portals, and websites. QuickSight serverlessly scales automatically from tens of users to tens of thousands without any infrastructure management.
Using QuickSight
QuickSight APIs
Amazon recently added a full set of aws quicksight APIs for interacting with QuickSight. For example, to preview the three QuickSight data sets created for this part of the demo, with the AWS CLI, we would use the list-data-sets comand.
| aws quicksight list-data-sets –aws-account-id 123456789012 |
| { | |
| "Status": 200, | |
| "DataSetSummaries": [ | |
| { | |
| "Arn": "arn:aws:quicksight:us-east-1:123456789012:dataset/9eb88a69-20de-d8be-aefd-2c7ac4e23748", | |
| "DataSetId": "9eb88a69-20de-d8be-aefd-2c7ac4e23748", | |
| "Name": "etl_output_parquet", | |
| "CreatedTime": 1578028774.897, | |
| "LastUpdatedTime": 1578955245.02, | |
| "ImportMode": "SPICE" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "Arn": "arn:aws:quicksight:us-east-1:123456789012:dataset/78e81193-189c-6dd0-864fb-a33244c9654", | |
| "DataSetId": "78e81193-189c-6dd0-864fb-a33244c9654", | |
| "Name": "electricity_rates_parquet", | |
| "CreatedTime": 1578029224.996, | |
| "LastUpdatedTime": 1578945179.472, | |
| "ImportMode": "SPICE" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "Arn": "arn:aws:quicksight:us-east-1:123456789012:dataset/a474214d-c838-b384-bcca-ea1fcd2dd094", | |
| "DataSetId": "a474214d-c838-b384-bcca-ea1fcd2dd094", | |
| "Name": "smart_hub_locations_parquet", | |
| "CreatedTime": 1578029124.565, | |
| "LastUpdatedTime": 1578888788.135, | |
| "ImportMode": "SPICE" | |
| } | |
| ], | |
| "RequestId": "2524e80c-7c67-7fbd-c3f1-b700c521badc" | |
| } |
To examine details of a single data set, with the AWS CLI, we would use the describe-data-set command.
| aws quicksight describe-data-set \ | |
| –aws-account-id 123456789012 \ | |
| –data-set-id 9eb88a69-20de-d8be-aefd-2c7ac4e23748 |
QuickSight Console
However, for this final part of the demonstration, we will be working from the Amazon QuickSight Console, as opposed to the AWS CLI, AWS CDK, or CloudFormation templates.
Signing Up for QuickSight
To use Amazon QuickSight, you must sign up for QuickSight.
There are two Editions of Amazon QuickSight, Standard and Enterprise. For this demonstration, the Standard Edition will suffice.
QuickSight Data Sets
Amazon QuickSight uses Data Sets as the basis for all data visualizations. According to AWS, QuickSight data sets can be created from a wide variety of data sources, including Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Athena, and Amazon S3. You can also upload Excel spreadsheets or flat files (CSV, TSV, CLF, ELF, and JSON), connect to on-premises databases like SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL and import data from SaaS applications like Salesforce. Below, we see a list of the latest data sources available in the QuickSight New Data Set Console.
Demonstration Data Sets
For the demonstration, I have created three QuickSight data sets, all based on Amazon Athena. You have two options when using Amazon Athena as a data source. The first option is to select a table from an AWS Glue Data Catalog database, such as the database we created in part one of the post, ‘smart_hub_data_catalog.’ The second option is to create a custom SQL query, based on one or more tables in an AWS Glue Data Catalog database.
Of the three data sets created for part two of this demonstration, two data sets use tables directly from the Data Catalog, including ‘etl_output_parquet’ and ‘electricity_rates_parquet.’ The third data set uses a custom SQL query, based on the single Data Catalog table, ‘smart_hub_locations_parquet.’ All three tables used to create the data sets represent the enriched, highly efficient Parquet-format data sources in the S3-based Data Lake.
Data Set Features
There are a large number of features available when creating and configuring data sets. We cannot possibly cover all of them in this post. Let’s look at three features: geospatial field types, calculated fields, and custom SQL.
Geospatial Data Types
QuickSight can intelligently detect common types of geographic fields in a data source and assign QuickSight geographic data type, including Country, County, City, Postcode, and State. QuickSight can also detect geospatial data, including Latitude and Longitude. We will take advantage of this QuickSight feature for our three data set’s data sources, including the State, Postcode, Latitude, and Longitude field types.
Calculated Fields
A commonly-used QuickSight data set feature is the ‘Calculated field.’ For the ‘etl_output_parquet’ data set, I have created a new field (column), cost_dollar.
The cost field is the electrical cost of the device, over a five minute time interval, in cents (¢). The calculated cost_dollar field is the quotient of the cost field divided by 100. This value represents the electrical cost of the device, over a five minute time interval, in dollars ($). This is a straightforward example. However, a calculated field can be very complex, built from multiple arithmetic, comparison, and conditional functions, string calculations, and data set fields.
Data set calculated fields can also be created and edited from the QuickSight Analysis Console (discussed later).
Custom SQL
The third QuickSight data set is based on an Amazon Athena custom SQL query.
| SELECT lon, lat, postcode, hash, tz, state | |
| FROM smart_hub_data_catalog.smart_hub_locations_parquet; |
Although you can write queries in the QuickSight Data Prep Console, I prefer to write custom Athena queries using the Athena Query Editor. Using the Editor, you can write, run, debug, and optimize queries to ensure they function correctly, first.
The Athena query can then be pasted into the Custom SQL window. Clicking ‘Finish’ in the window is the equivalent of ‘Run query’ in the Athena Query Editor Console. The query runs and returns data.
Similar to the Athena Query Editor, queries executed in the QuickSight Data Prep Console will show up in the Athena History tab, with a /* QuickSight */ comment prefix.
SPICE
You will notice the three QuickSight data sets are labeled, ‘SPICE.’ According to AWS, the acronym, SPICE, stands for ‘Super-fast, Parallel, In-memory, Calculation Engine.’ QuickSight’s in-memory calculation engine, SPICE, achieves blazing fast performance at scale. SPICE automatically replicates data for high availability allowing thousands of users to simultaneously perform fast, interactive analysis while shielding your underlying data infrastructure, saving you time and resources. With the Standard Edition of QuickSight, as the first Author, you get 1 GB of SPICE in-memory data for free.
QuickSight Analysis
The QuickSight Analysis Console is where Analyses are created. A specific QuickSight Analysis will contain a collection of data sets and data visualizations (visuals). Each visual is associated with a single data set.
Types of QuickSight Analysis visuals include: horizontal and vertical, single and stacked bar charts, line graphs, combination charts, area line charts, scatter plots, heat maps, pie and donut charts, tree maps, pivot tables, gauges, key performance indicators (KPI), geospatial diagrams, and word clouds. Individual visual titles, legends, axis, and other visual aspects can be easily modified. Visuals can contain drill-downs.
A data set’s fields can be modified from within the Analysis Console. Field types and formats, such as date, numeric, currency fields, can be customized for display. The Analysis can include a Title and subtitle. There are some customizable themes available to change the overall look of the Analysis.
Analysis Filters
Data displayed in the visuals can be further shaped using a combination of Filters, Conditional formatting, and Parameters. Below, we see an example of a typical filter based on a range of dates and times. The data set contains two full days’ worth of data. Here, we are filtering the data to a 14-hour peak electrical usage period, between 8 AM and 10 PM on the same day, 12/21/2019.
Drill-Down, Drill-Up, Focus, and Exclude
According to AWS, all visual types except pivot tables offer the ability to create a hierarchy of fields for a visual element. The hierarchy lets you drill down or up to see data at different levels of the hierarchy. Focus allows you to concentrate on a single element within a hierarchy of fields. Exclude allows you to remove an element from a hierarchy of fields. Below, we see an example of all four of these features, available to apply to the ‘Central Air Conditioner’. Since the AC unit is the largest consumer of electricity on average per day, applying these filters to understand its impact on the overall electrical usage may be useful to an analysis. We can also drill down to minutes from hours or up to days from hours.
Example QuickSight Analysis
A QuickSight Analysis is shared by the Analysis Author as a QuickSight Dashboard. Below, we see an example of a QuickSight Dashboard, built and shared for this demonstration. The ‘Residential Electrical Usage Analysis’ is built from the three data sets created earlier. From those data sets, we have constructed several visuals, including a geospatial diagram, donut chart, heat map, KPI, combination chart, stacked vertical bar chart, and line graph. Each visual’s title, layout, and field display has all customized. The data displayed in the visuals have been filtered differently, including by date and time, by customer id (loc_id), and by state. Conditional formatting is used to enhance the visual appearance of visuals, such as the ‘Total Electrical Cost’ KPI.
Conclusion
In part one, we learned how to ingest, transform, and enrich raw, semi-structured data, in multiple formats, using Amazon S3, AWS Glue, Amazon Athena, and AWS Lambda. We built an S3-based data lake and learned how AWS leverages open-source technologies, including Presto, Apache Hive, and Apache Parquet. In part two of this post, we used the transformed and enriched datasets, stored in the data lake, to create compelling visualizations using Amazon QuickSight.
All opinions expressed in this post are my own and not necessarily the views of my current or past employers or their clients.
Executing Amazon Athena Queries from JetBrains PyCharm
Posted by Gary A. Stafford in AWS, Big Data, Cloud, Python, Software Development, SQL on January 8, 2020
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:
- Microsoft Visual Studio
- Android Studio
- Eclipse
- Visual Studio Code
- Apache NetBeans
- JetBrains PyCharm
- JetBrains IntelliJ
- Apple Xcode
- Sublime Text
- 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:
- Your IAM User Access Key ID
- Your IAM User Secret Access Key
- The AWS Region of your Athena instance (e.g., us-east-1)
- 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.
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Gary Stafford
AWS Solutions Architect | AWS Certified Professional | DevOps | Azure | GCP | Containers | Serverless | Spring | Node.js
