Metadata Access Control
For access control for Data Catalog resources, the following discussion assumes fine-grained access control with Lake Formation permissions and coarse-grained access control with IAM policies.
Lake Formation permission grants have this form:
Grant permissions to principal on resource [with grant option].
With the grant option, you can allow the grantee to grant the permissions to other principals.
The following table summarizes the available Lake Formation permissions on Data Catalog resources. The column headings indicate the resource on which the permission is granted.
Catalog | Database | Table |
---|---|---|
CREATE_DATABASE |
CREATE_TABLE |
ALTER |
ALTER |
DROP |
|
DROP |
DESCRIBE |
|
DESCRIBE |
SELECT *
|
|
INSERT *
|
||
DELETE *
|
For example, the CREATE_TABLE
permission is granted on a database. This
means that the principal is allowed to create tables in that database.
The permissions with an asterisk (*) are granted on Data Catalog resources, but they
apply to
the underlying data. For example, the DROP
permission on a metadata table
enables you to drop the table from the Data Catalog. However, the DELETE
permission
granted on the same table enables you to delete the table's underlying data in Amazon
S3, using,
for example, a SQL DELETE
statement. With these permissions, you also can view
the table on the Lake Formation console and retrieve information about the table with
the AWS Glue API.
Thus, SELECT
, INSERT
, and DELETE
are both Data Catalog
permissions and data access permissions.
When granting SELECT
on a table, you can add a filter that includes or
excludes one or more columns. This permits fine-grained access control on metadata
table
columns, limiting the columns that users of integrated services can see when running
queries. This capability is not available using just IAM policies.
There is also a special permission named Super
. The Super
permission enables a principal to perform every supported Lake Formation operation
on the database or
table on which it is granted. This permission can coexist with the other Lake Formation
permissions.
For example, you can grant Super
, SELECT
, and INSERT
on a metadata table. The principal can perform all supported actions on the table,
and when
you revoke Super
, the SELECT
and INSERT
permissions
remain.
For details on each permission, see Lake Formation Permissions Reference.
To be able to see a Data Catalog table created by another user, you must be granted at least one Lake Formation permission on the table. If you are granted at least one permission on the table, you can also see the table's containing database.
You can grant or revoke Data Catalog permissions using the Lake Formation console,
the API, or the
AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). The following is an example of an AWS CLI command
that grants the user
datalake_user1
permission to create tables in the retail
database.
aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 --permissions "CREATE_TABLE" --resource '{ "Database": {"Name":"retail"}}'
The following is an example of a coarse-grained access control IAM policy that complements fine-grained access control with Lake Formation permissions. It permits all operations on any metadata database or table.
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "glue:*Database*", "glue:*Table*", "glue:*Partition*" ], "Resource": "*" } ] }
The next example is also coarse-grained but somewhat more restrictive. It permits read-only operations on all metadata databases and tables in the Data Catalog in the designated account and Region.
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "glue:GetTables", "glue:SearchTables", "glue:GetTable", "glue:GetDatabase", "glue:GetDatabases" ], "Resource": "arn:aws:glue:us-east-1:111122223333:*" } ] }
Compare these policies to the following policy, which implements IAM-based fine-grained access control. It grants permissions only on a subset of tables in the customer relationship management (CRM) metadata database in the designated account and Region.
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "glue:GetTables", "glue:SearchTables", "glue:GetTable", "glue:GetDatabase", "glue:GetDatabases" ], "Resource": [ "arn:aws:glue:us-east-1:111122223333:catalog", "arn:aws:glue:us-east-1:111122223333:database/CRM", "arn:aws:glue:us-east-1:111122223333:table/CRM/P*" ] } ] }
For more examples of coarse-grained access control policies, see Lake Formation Personas and IAM Permissions Reference.