Document history - Amazon Athena

Document history

Latest documentation update: March 18, 2024.

We update the documentation frequently to address your feedback. The following table describes important additions to the Amazon Athena documentation. Not all updates are represented.

Change Description Release date
Updated AmazonAthenaFullAccess managed policy. The datazone:ListDomains, datazone:ListProjects, and datazone:ListAccountEnvironments permissions were added to the AmazonAthenaFullAccess managed policy. The added actions allow Athena users to work with Amazon DataZone domains, projects, and environments. For more information, see Using Amazon DataZone in Athena. January 3, 2024
Updated AmazonAthenaFullAccess managed policy.

Added glue:StartColumnStatisticsTaskRun, glue:GetColumnStatisticsTaskRun, and glue:GetColumnStatisticsTaskRuns permissions to the AmazonAthenaFullAccess managed policy. The added actions allow Athena to call AWS Glue to retrieve statistics for the cost-based optimizer feature. For more information, see Using the cost-based optimizer.

January 3, 2024
Added documentation for IAM Identity Center enabled Athena workgroups. You can create Athena SQL workgroups that use IAM Identity Center authentication mode. These workgroups support using the same identity across AWS services like Amazon Athena and Amazon EMR Studio. For more information, see Using IAM Identity Center enabled Athena workgroups. December 5, 2023
Added documentation for querying S3 Express One Zone data You can use Athena to query data in Amazon S3 Express One Zone storage class. For more information, see Querying S3 Express One Zone data. November 28, 2023
Added documentation for Glue Data Catalog views. You can use Glue Data Catalog views to provide a single common view across AWS services like Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift. For more information, see Using AWS Glue Data Catalog views. November 27, 2023
Added documentation for the cost-based optimizer feature. You can use statistics from AWS Glue to optimize your queries in Athena SQL. For more information, see Using the cost-based optimizer. November 17, 2023
Added documentation for the Athena JDBC 3.x driver You can use the Athena JDBC 3.x driver to read query results directly from Amazon S3. The JDBC 3.x driver supports almost all authentication methods that the JDBC 2.x driver supports. For more information, see Athena JDBC 3.x driver. November 16, 2023
Added documentation for using DataZone in Athena. You can use DataZone to simplify your experience across AWS analytics services like Athena, AWS Glue, and Lake Formation. For more information, see Using Amazon DataZone in Athena. October 4, 2023
Added documentation for capacity reservations. You can now use capacity reservations on Amazon Athena to run SQL queries on fully-managed compute capacity. For more information, see Managing query processing capacity. April 28, 2023
Added documentation for querying federated views. You can now create and query views on federated data sources in Athena. For more information, see Querying federated views. April 4, 2023
Added documentation on preventing throttling in Amazon S3. For more information, see Preventing Amazon S3 throttling. March 24, 2023
Updated AmazonAthenaFullAccess managed policy. Added pricing:GetProducts to the AmazonAthenaFullAccess managed policy. The added action provides access to AWS Billing and Cost Management. For more information, see GetProducts in the AWS Billing and Cost Management API Reference. January 25, 2023
Expanded documentation for Athena compression support. Individual topics added for Hive table compression, Iceberg table compression, and ZSTD compression levels. For more information, see Athena compression support. January 20, 2023
Added documentation for Amazon Athena for Apache Spark. You can now interactively create and run Apache Spark applications and Jupyter compatible notebooks on Amazon Athena. For more information, see Using Apache Spark in Amazon Athena. November 30, 2022
Added documentation for the Athena IBM Db2 connector. You can use the Amazon Athena connector for IBM Db2 to query Db2 from Athena. For more information, see Amazon Athena IBM Db2 connector November 18, 2022
Added documentation for query result reuse. When you re-run a query in Athena, you can now optionally choose to reuse the last stored query result. This can increase performance and reduce costs in terms of the number of bytes scanned. For more information, see Reusing query results. November 8, 2022
Updated documentation for CloudTrail logs. The CREATE TABLE DDL for querying CloudTrail logs has been updated to use the JSON SerDe instead of the CloudTrail SerDe. For more information, see Querying AWS CloudTrail logs. November 3, 2022
Added documentation for Athena engine version 3. For more information about Athena engine version 3, see Athena engine version 3. October 13, 2022
Added tutorial on configuring SSO for ODBC using the Okta plugin.

Configure the Amazon Athena ODBC driver and the Okta plugin for single sign-on (SSO) capability using the Okta identity provider. For more information, see Configuring SSO for ODBC using the Okta plugin and Okta Identity Provider.

August 23, 2022
Added documentation for viewing query plans and statistics in the Athena console. You can use the Athena query editor to see graphical representations of how your queries will be run and graphs, details, and statistics of how completed queries ran. For more information, see Viewing execution plans for SQL queries and Viewing statistics and execution details for completed queries. July 21, 2022
Added documentation for querying Apache Hive views in external Hive metastores. You can use Athena to query Apache views created in external Hive metastores. Some Hive functions are not supported or require special handling. For more information, see Working with Hive views. April 22, 2022
Added documentation for saved queries. You can use the saved queries feature in Athena to save, recall, edit, and rename your queries. For more information, see Using saved queries in this guide and UpdateNamedQuery in the Amazon Athena API Reference. February 28, 2022
Added preview documentation for Apache Iceberg support. Athena supports read, time travel, and write queries for Apache Iceberg tables that use the Apache Parquet format for data and the AWS Glue catalog for their metastore. For more information, see Using Apache Iceberg tables. November 26, 2021
Added documentation for cross-account federated queries. You can use the cross-account federated query feature to query data sources in another account. For information about setting up permissions to enable this feature, see Enabling cross-account federated queries. November 12, 2021
Added documentation for the Athena UNLOAD statement. Use the UNLOAD statement to write query the results from a SELECT statement to the Apache Parquet, ORC, Apache Avro, and JSON formats. For more information, see UNLOAD. August 5, 2021
Added documentation for the Athena EXPLAIN statement feature. For more information, see Using EXPLAIN and EXPLAIN ANALYZE in Athena and Understanding Athena EXPLAIN statement results. April 5, 2021
Added pages on troubleshooting and performance tuning in Athena. For more information, see Troubleshooting in Athena and Performance tuning in Athena. December 30, 2020
Added documentation for Athena engine versioning and Athena engine version 2. For more information, see Athena engine versioning. November 11, 2020
Updated federated query documentation for general availability release. For more information, see Using Amazon Athena Federated Query and Using Athena with CalledVia context keys. November 11, 2020
Added documentation for using the JDBC driver with Lake Formation for federated access to Athena. For more information, see Using Lake Formation and the Athena JDBC and ODBC drivers for federated access to Athena and Tutorial: Configuring federated access for Okta users to Athena using Lake Formation and JDBC. September 25, 2020
Added documentation for the Amazon Athena OpenSearch data connector. For more information, see Amazon Athena OpenSearch connector. July 21, 2020
Added documentation for querying Hudi datasets. For more information, see Using Athena to query Apache Hudi datasets. July 9, 2020
Added documentation on querying Apache web server logs and IIS web server logs stored in Amazon S3. For more information, see Querying Apache logs stored in Amazon S3 and Querying internet information server (IIS) logs stored in Amazon S3. July 8, 2020
Added documentation for the general release of the Athena Data Connector for External Hive Metastore. For more information, see Using Athena Data Connector for External Hive Metastore. June 1, 2020
Added documentation for tagging data catalog resources. For more information, see Tagging Athena resources. June 1, 2020
Added documentation on partition projection. For more information, see Partition projection with Amazon Athena. May 21, 2020
Updated the Java code examples for Athena. For more information, see Code samples. May 11, 2020
Added a topic on querying Amazon GuardDuty findings. For more information, see Querying Amazon GuardDuty findings. March 19, 2020
Added a topic on using CloudWatch Events to monitor Athena query state transitions. For more information, see Monitoring Athena queries with Amazon EventBridge events. March 11, 2020
Added a topic on querying AWS Global Accelerator flow logs with Athena. For more information, see Querying AWS Global Accelerator flow logs. February 6, 2020
  • Added documentation on using CTAS with INSERT INTO to add data from an unpartitioned source to a partitioned destination.

  • Added download links for the 1.1.0 preview version of the ODBC driver for Athena.

  • Description for SHOW DATABASES LIKE regex corrected.

  • Corrected partitioned_by syntax in CTA topic.

  • Other minor fixes.

Documentation updates include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

February 4, 2020
Added documentation on using CTAS with INSERT INTO to add data from a partitioned source to a partitioned destination. For more information, see Using CTAS and INSERT INTO to work around the 100 partition limit. January 22, 2020
Query results location information updated. Athena no longer creates a 'default' query results location. For more information, see Specifying a query result location. January 20, 2020
Added topic on querying the AWS Glue Data Catalog. Updated information about service quotas (formerly "service limits") in Athena. For more information, see the following topics: January 17, 2020
Corrected topic on OpenCSVSerDe to note that the TIMESTAMP type should be specified in the UNIX numeric format. For more information, see OpenCSVSerDe for processing CSV. January 15, 2020
Updated security topic on encryption to note that Athena does not support asymmetric keys.

Athena supports only symmetric keys for reading and writing data.

For more information, see Supported Amazon S3 encryption options.
January 8, 2020
Added information about cross-account access to Amazon S3 buckets that are encrypted with a custom AWS KMS key. For more information, see Cross-account access to a bucket encrypted with a custom AWS KMS key. December 13, 2019

Added documentation for federated queries, external Hive metastores, machine learning, and user defined functions. Added new CloudWatch metrics.

For more information, see the following topics: November 26, 2019
Added section for new INSERT INTO command and updated query result location information for supporting data manifest files. For more information, see INSERT INTO and Working with query results, recent queries, and output files. September 18, 2019

Added section for interface VPC endpoints (PrivateLink) support. Updated JDBC drivers. Updated information about enriched VPC flow logs.

For more information, see Connect to Amazon Athena using an interface VPC endpoint, Querying Amazon VPC flow logs, and Connecting to Amazon Athena with JDBC.

September 11, 2019

Added section on integrating with AWS Lake Formation.

For more information, see Using Athena to query data registered with AWS Lake Formation.

June 26, 2019

Updated Security section for consistency with other AWS services.

For more information, see Amazon Athena security.

June 26, 2019

Added section on querying AWS WAF logs.

For more information, see Querying AWS WAF logs.

May 31, 2019

Released the new version of the ODBC driver with support for Athena workgroups.

To download the ODBC driver version 1.0.5 and its documentation, see Connecting to Amazon Athena with ODBC. There are no changes to the ODBC driver connection string when you use tags on workgroups. To use tags, upgrade to the latest version of the ODBC driver, which is this current version.

This driver version lets you use Athena API workgroup actions to create and manage workgroups, and Athena API tag actions to add, list, or remove tags on workgroups. Before you begin, make sure that you have resource-level permissions in IAM for actions on workgroups and tags.

March 5, 2019
Added tag support for workgroups in Amazon Athena.

A tag consists of a key and a value, both of which you define. When you tag a workgroup, you assign custom metadata to it. For example, create a workgroup for each cost center. Then, by adding tags to these workgroups, you can track your Athena spending for each cost center. For more information, see Using tags for billing in the AWS Billing and Cost Management User Guide.

February 22, 2019
Improved the JSON OpenX SerDe used in Athena.

The improvements include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Support for the ConvertDotsInJsonKeysToUnderscores property. When set to TRUE, it allows the SerDe to replace the dots in key names with underscores. For example, if the JSON dataset contains a key with the name "a.b", you can use this property to define the column name to be "a_b" in Athena. The default is FALSE. By default, Athena does not allow dots in column names.

  • Support for the case.insensitive property. By default, Athena requires that all keys in your JSON dataset use lowercase. Using WITH SERDE PROPERTIES ("case.insensitive"= FALSE;) allows you to use case-sensitive key names in your data. The default is TRUE. When set to TRUE, the SerDe converts all uppercase columns to lowercase.

For more information, see OpenX JSON SerDe.

February 18, 2019
Added support for workgroups.

Use workgroups to separate users, teams, applications, or workloads, and to set limits on amount of data each query or the entire workgroup can process. Because workgroups act as IAM resources, you can use resource-level permissions to control access to a specific workgroup. You can also view query-related metrics in Amazon CloudWatch, control query costs by configuring limits on the amount of data scanned, create thresholds, and trigger actions, such as Amazon SNS alarms, when these thresholds are breached. For more information, see Using workgroups for running queries and Controlling costs and monitoring queries with CloudWatch metrics and events.

February 18, 2019
Added support for analyzing logs from Network Load Balancer.

Added example Athena queries for analyzing logs from Network Load Balancer. These logs receive detailed information about the Transport Layer Security (TLS) requests sent to the Network Load Balancer. You can use these access logs to analyze traffic patterns and troubleshoot issues. For information, see Querying Network Load Balancer logs.

January 24, 2019

Released the new versions of the JDBC and ODBC driver with support for federated access to Athena API with the AD FS and SAML 2.0 (Security Assertion Markup Language 2.0).

With this release of the drivers, federated access to Athena is supported for the Active Directory Federation Service (AD FS 3.0). Access is established through the versions of JDBC or ODBC drivers that support SAML 2.0. For information about configuring federated access to the Athena API, see Enabling federated access to the Athena API.

November 10, 2018

Added support for fine-grained access control to databases and tables in Athena. Additionally, added policies in Athena that allow you to encrypt database and table metadata in the Data Catalog.

Added support for creating identity-based (IAM) policies that provide fine-grained access control to resources in the AWS Glue Data Catalog, such as databases and tables used in Athena.

Additionally, you can encrypt database and table metadata in the Data Catalog, by adding specific policies to Athena.

For details, see Fine-grained access to databases and tables in the AWS Glue Data Catalog.

October 15, 2018
Added support for CREATE TABLE AS SELECT statements.

Made other improvements in the documentation.

Added support for CREATE TABLE AS SELECT statements. See Creating a table from query results (CTAS), Considerations and limitations for CTAS queries, and Examples of CTAS queries.

October 10, 2018

Released the ODBC driver version 1.0.3 with support for streaming results instead of fetching them in pages.

Made other improvements in the documentation.

The ODBC driver version 1.0.3 supports streaming results and also includes improvements, bug fixes, and an updated documentation for "Using SSL with a Proxy Server".

For downloading the ODBC driver version 1.0.3 and its documentation, see Connecting to Amazon Athena with ODBC.

September 6, 2018

Released the JDBC driver version 2.0.5 with default support for streaming results instead of fetching them in pages.

Made other improvements in the documentation.

Released the JDBC driver 2.0.5 with default support for streaming results instead of fetching them in pages. For information, see Connecting to Amazon Athena with JDBC.

August 16, 2018

Updated the documentation for querying Amazon Virtual Private Cloud flow logs, which can be stored directly in Amazon S3 in a GZIP format.

Updated examples for querying ALB logs.

Updated the documentation for querying Amazon Virtual Private Cloud flow logs, which can be stored directly in Amazon S3 in a GZIP format. For information, see Querying Amazon VPC flow logs.

Updated examples for querying ALB logs. For information, see Querying Application Load Balancer logs.

August 7, 2018
Added support for views. Added guidelines for schema manipulations for various data storage formats.

Added support for views. For information, see Working with views.

Updated this guide with guidance on handling schema updates for various data storage formats. For information, see Handling schema updates.

June 5, 2018
Increased default query concurrency limits from five to twenty.

You can submit and run up to twenty DDL queries and twenty SELECT queries at a time. For information, see Service Quotas.

May 17, 2018
Added query tabs, and an ability to configure auto-complete in the Query Editor.

Added query tabs, and an ability to configure auto-complete in the Query Editor. For information, see Getting started.

May 8, 2018
Released the JDBC driver version 2.0.2.

Released the new version of the JDBC driver (version 2.0.2). For information, see Connecting to Amazon Athena with JDBC.

April 19, 2018

Added auto-complete for typing queries in the Athena console.

Added auto-complete for typing queries in the Athena console.

April 6, 2018

Added an ability to create Athena tables for CloudTrail log files directly from the CloudTrail console.

Added an ability to automatically create Athena tables for CloudTrail log files directly from the CloudTrail console. For information, see Using the CloudTrail console to create an Athena table for CloudTrail logs .

March 15, 2018
Added support for securely offloading intermediate data to disk for queries with GROUP BY. Added an ability to securely offload intermediate data to disk for memory-intensive queries that use the GROUP BY clause. This improves the reliability of such queries, preventing "Query resource exhausted" errors. For more information, see the release note for February 2, 2018. February 2, 2018
Added support for Presto version 0.172. Upgraded the underlying engine in Amazon Athena to a version based on Presto version 0.172. For more information, see the release note for January 19, 2018. January 19, 2018
Added support for the ODBC Driver. Added support for connecting Athena to the ODBC Driver. For information, see Connecting to Amazon Athena with ODBC. November 13, 2017
Added support for Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), and Europe (London) regions. Added support for querying geospatial data. Added support for querying geospatial data, and for Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Europe (London) regions. For information, see Querying geospatial data and AWS Regions and endpoints. November 1, 2017
Added support for Europe (Frankfurt). Added support for Europe (Frankfurt). For a list of supported regions, see AWS Regions and endpoints. October 19, 2017
Added support for named Athena queries with AWS CloudFormation. Added support for creating named Athena queries with AWS CloudFormation. For more information, see AWS::Athena::NamedQuery in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide. October 3, 2017
Added support for Asia Pacific (Sydney). Added support for Asia Pacific (Sydney). For a list of supported regions, see AWS Regions and endpoints. September 25, 2017
Added a section to this guide for querying AWS service logs and different types of data, including maps, arrays, nested data, and data containing JSON. Added examples for Querying AWS service logs and for querying different types of data in Athena. For information, see Running SQL queries using Amazon Athena. September 5, 2017
Added support for AWS Glue Data Catalog. Added integration with the AWS Glue Data Catalog and a migration wizard for updating from the Athena managed data catalog to the AWS Glue Data Catalog. For more information, see Integration with AWS Glue and AWS Glue. August 14, 2017
Added support for Grok SerDe. Added support for Grok SerDe, which provides easier pattern matching for records in unstructured text files such as logs. For more information, see Grok SerDe. Added keyboard shortcuts to scroll through query history using the console. August 4, 2017
Added support for Asia Pacific (Tokyo). Added support for Asia Pacific (Tokyo) and Asia Pacific (Singapore). For a list of supported regions, see AWS Regions and endpoints. June 22, 2017
Added support for Europe (Ireland). Added support for Europe (Ireland). For more information, see AWS Regions and endpoints. June 8, 2017
Added an Amazon Athena API and AWS CLI support. Added an Amazon Athena API and AWS CLI support for Athena. Updated JDBC driver to version 1.1.0. May 19, 2017
Added support for Amazon S3 data encryption. Added support for Amazon S3 data encryption and released a JDBC driver update (version 1.0.1) with encryption support, improvements, and bug fixes. For more information, see Encryption at rest. April 4, 2017
Added the AWS CloudTrail SerDe. Added the AWS CloudTrail SerDe, improved performance, fixed partition issues.
  • The AWS CloudTrail SerDe has been superseded by the Hive JSON SerDe for reading CloudTrail logs. For information about querying CloudTrail logs, see Querying AWS CloudTrail logs.

  • Improved performance when scanning a large number of partitions.

  • Improved performance on MSCK Repair Table operation.

  • Added ability to query Amazon S3 data stored in regions other than your primary region. Standard inter-region data transfer rates for Amazon S3 apply in addition to standard Athena charges.

March 24, 2017
Added support for US East (Ohio). Added support for Avro SerDe and OpenCSVSerDe for processing CSV, US East (Ohio), and bulk editing columns in the console wizard. Improved performance on large Parquet tables. February 20, 2017
The initial release of the Amazon Athena User Guide. November, 2016