Before you start Considerations and limitations Get started (Optional) Configure additional Amazon S3 permissions (Optional) Use a catalog dynamically (Optional) Use the API to register an Athena Data Catalog that belongs to the owner account Additional resources

Configure cross-account access to AWS Glue data catalogs

You can use Athena's cross-account AWS Glue catalog feature to register an AWS Glue catalog from an account other than your own. After you configure the required IAM permissions for AWS Glue and register the catalog as an Athena DataCatalog resource, you can use Athena to run cross-account queries. For information about using the Athena console to register a catalog from another account, see Register a Data Catalog from another account.

For more information about cross-account access in AWS Glue, see Granting cross-account access in the AWS Glue Developer Guide.

Before you start

Because this feature uses existing Athena DataCatalog resource APIs and functionality to enable cross-account access, we recommend that you read the following resources before you start:

Connect to data sources - Contains topics on using Athena with AWS Glue, Hive, or Lambda data catalog sources.
Data Catalog example policies - Shows how to write policies that control access to data catalogs.
Use the AWS CLI with Hive metastores - Shows how to use the AWS CLI with Hive metastores, but contains use cases applicable to other data sources.

Considerations and limitations

Currently, Athena cross-account AWS Glue catalog access has the following limitations:

The feature is available only in AWS Regions where Athena engine version 2 or later is supported. For information about Athena engine versions, see Athena engine versioning. To upgrade the engine version for a workgroup, see Change Athena engine versions.
When you register another account's AWS Glue Data Catalog in your account, you create a regional DataCatalog resource that is linked to the other account's data in that particular Region only.
Currently, CREATE VIEW statements that include a cross-account AWS Glue catalog are not supported.
Catalogs encrypted using AWS managed keys cannot be queried across accounts. For catalogs that you want to query across accounts, use customer managed keys (KMS_CMK) instead. For information about the differences between customer managed keys and AWS managed keys, see Customer keys and AWS keys in the AWS Key Management Service Developer Guide.

Get started

In the following scenario, the "borrower" account (666666666666) wants to run a SELECT query that refers to the AWS Glue catalog that belongs to the "owner" account (999999999999), as in the following example:


SELECT * FROM ownerCatalog.tpch1000.customer

In the following procedure, Steps 1a and 1b show how to give the borrower account access to the owner account's AWS Glue resources, from both the borrower and owner's side. The example grants access to the database tpch1000 and the table customer. Change these example names to fit your requirements.

Step 1a: Create a borrower role with a policy to access the owner's AWS Glue resources

To create borrower account role with a policy to access to the owner account's AWS Glue resources, you can use the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) console or the IAM API. The following procedures use the IAM console.

To create a borrower role and policy to access the owner account's AWS Glue resources

Sign in to the IAM console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/ from the borrower account.
In the navigation pane, expand Access management, and then choose Policies.
Choose Create policy.
For Policy editor, choose JSON.

In the policy editor, enter the following policy, and then modify it according to your requirements:


{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "glue:*",
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:glue:us-east-1:999999999999:catalog",
                "arn:aws:glue:us-east-1:999999999999:database/tpch1000",
                "arn:aws:glue:us-east-1:999999999999:table/tpch1000/customer"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Choose Next.
On the Review and create page, for Policy name, enter a name for the policy (for example, CrossGluePolicyForBorrowerRole).
Choose Create policy.
In the navigation pane, choose Roles.
Choose Create role.
On the Select trusted entity page, choose AWS account, and then choose Next.
On the Add permissions page, enter the name of the policy that you created into the search box (for example, CrossGluePolicyForBorrowerRole).
Select the check box next to the policy name, and then choose Next.
On the Name, review, and create page, for Role name, enter a name for the role (for example, CrossGlueBorrowerRole).
Choose Create role.

Step 1b: Create an owner policy to grant AWS Glue access to the borrower

To grant AWS Glue access from the owner account (999999999999) to the borrower's role, you can use the AWS Glue console or the AWS Glue PutResourcePolicy API operation. The following procedure uses the AWS Glue console.

To grant AWS Glue access to the borrower account from the owner

Sign in to the AWS Glue console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/glue/ from the owner account.
In the navigation pane, expand Data Catalog, and then choose Catalog settings.

In the Permissions box, enter a policy like the following. For rolename, enter the role that the borrower created in Step 1a (for example, CrossGlueBorrowerRole). If you want to increase the permission scope, you can use the wild card character * for both the database and table resource types.


{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": [
                    "arn:aws:iam::666666666666:user/username",
                    "arn:aws:iam::666666666666:role/rolename"
                ]
            },
            "Action": "glue:*",
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:glue:us-east-1:999999999999:catalog",
                "arn:aws:glue:us-east-1:999999999999:database/tpch1000",
                "arn:aws:glue:us-east-1:999999999999:table/tpch1000/customer"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

After you finish, we recommend that you use the AWS Glue API to make some test cross-account calls to confirm that permissions are configured as you expect.

Step 2: The borrower registers the AWS Glue Data Catalog that belongs to the owner account

The following procedure shows you how to use the Athena console to configure the AWS Glue Data Catalog in the owner Amazon Web Services account as a data source. For information about using API operations instead of the console to register the catalog, see (Optional) Use the API to register an Athena Data Catalog that belongs to the owner account.

To register an AWS Glue Data Catalog belonging to another account

Open the Athena console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/athena/.
If the console navigation pane is not visible, choose the expansion menu on the left.
Expand Administration, and then choose Data sources.
On the upper right, choose Create data source.
On the Choose a data source page, for Data sources, select S3 - AWS Glue Data Catalog, and then choose Next.
On the Enter data source details page, in the AWS Glue Data Catalog section, for Choose an AWS Glue Data Catalog, choose AWS Glue Data Catalog in another account.
For Data source details, enter the following information:
- Data source name – Enter the name that you want to use in your SQL queries to refer to the data catalog in the other account.
- Description – (Optional) Enter a description of the data catalog in the other account.
- Catalog ID – Enter the 12-digit Amazon Web Services account ID of the account to which the data catalog belongs. The Amazon Web Services account ID is the catalog ID.
(Optional) Expand Tags, and then enter key-value pairs that you want to associate with the data source. For more information about tags, see Tag Athena resources.
Choose Next.
On the Review and create page, review the information that you provided, and then choose Create data source. The Data source details page lists the databases and tags for the data catalog that you registered.
Choose Data sources. The data catalog that you registered is listed in the Data source name column.
To view or edit information about the data catalog, choose the catalog, and then choose Actions, Edit.
To delete the new data catalog, choose the catalog, and then choose Actions, Delete.

Step 3: The borrower submits a query

The borrower submits a query that references the catalog using the catalog.database.table syntax, as in the following example:


SELECT * FROM ownerCatalog.tpch1000.customer

Instead of using the fully qualified syntax, the borrower can also specify the catalog contextually by passing it in through the QueryExecutionContext.

(Optional) Configure additional Amazon S3 permissions

If the borrower account uses an Athena query to write new data to a table in the owner account, the owner will not automatically have access to this data in Amazon S3, even though the table exists in the owner's account. This is because the borrower is the object owner of the information in Amazon S3 unless otherwise configured. To grant the owner access to the data, set the permissions on the objects accordingly as an additional step.
Certain cross-account DDL operations like MSCK REPAIR TABLE require Amazon S3 permissions. For example, if the borrower account is performing a cross-account MSCK REPAIR operation against a table in the owner account that has its data in an owner account S3 bucket, that bucket must grant permissions to the role assumed by the borrower for the query to succeed.

For information about granting bucket permissions, see How do I set ACL bucket permissions? in the Amazon Simple Storage Service User Guide.

(Optional) Use a catalog dynamically

In some cases you might want to quickly perform testing against a cross-account AWS Glue catalog without the prerequisite step of registering it. You can dynamically perform cross-account queries without creating the DataCatalog resource object if the required IAM and Amazon S3 permissions are correctly configured as described earlier in this document.

To explicitly reference a catalog without registration, use the syntax in the following example:


SELECT * FROM "glue:arn:aws:glue:us-east-1:999999999999:catalog".tpch1000.customer

Use the format "glue:<arn>", where <arn> is the AWS Glue Data Catalog ARN that you want to use. In the example, Athena uses this syntax to dynamically point to account 999999999999's AWS Glue data catalog as if you had separately created a DataCatalog object for it.

Notes for using dynamic catalogs

When you use dynamic catalogs, remember the following points.

Use of a dynamic catalog requires the IAM permissions that you normally use for Athena Data Catalog API operations. The main difference is that the Data Catalog resource name follows the glue:* naming convention.
The catalog ARN must belong to the same Region where the query is being run.
When using a dynamic catalog in a DML query or view, surround it with escaped double quotation marks (\"). When using a dynamic catalog in a DDL query, surround it with backtick characters (`).

(Optional) Use the API to register an Athena Data Catalog that belongs to the owner account

Instead of using the Athena console as described in Step 2, it is possible to use API operations to register the Data Catalog that belongs to the owner account.

The creator of the Athena DataCatalog resource must have the necessary permissions to run the Athena CreateDataCatalog API operation. Depending on your requirements, access to additional API operations might be necessary. For more information, see Data Catalog example policies.

The following CreateDataCatalog request body registers an AWS Glue catalog for cross-account access:


# Example CreateDataCatalog request to register a cross-account Glue catalog:
{
    "Description": "Cross-account Glue catalog",
    "Name": "ownerCatalog",
    "Parameters": {"catalog-id" : "999999999999"  # Owner's account ID
    },
    "Type": "GLUE"
}

The following sample code uses a Java client to create the DataCatalog object.


# Sample code to create the DataCatalog through Java client
CreateDataCatalogRequest request = new CreateDataCatalogRequest()
    .withName("ownerCatalog")
    .withType(DataCatalogType.GLUE)
    .withParameters(ImmutableMap.of("catalog-id", "999999999999"));

athenaClient.createDataCatalog(request);

After these steps, the borrower should see ownerCatalog when it calls the ListDataCatalogs API operation.

Additional resources

Register a Data Catalog from another account
Configure cross-account access to a shared AWS Glue Data Catalog using Amazon Athena in the AWS Prescriptive Guidance Patterns guide.
Query cross-account AWS Glue Data Catalogs using Amazon Athena in the AWS Big Data Blog
Granting cross-account access in the AWS Glue Developer Guide

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Document Conventions

Access to databases and tables in AWS Glue

Access to encrypted metadata in the Data Catalog