Build an OLAP Cube in SSAS from Amazon Athena Data

SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) serves as an analytical data engine employed in decision support and business analytics, offering high-level semantic data models for business reports and client applications like Power BI, Excel, Reporting Services reports, and various data visualization tools. When coupled with the CData ADO.NET Provider for Amazon Athena, you gain the capability to generate cubes from Amazon Athena data, facilitating more profound and efficient data analysis.

In this article, we will guide you through the process of developing and deploying a multi-dimensional model of Amazon Athena data by creating an Analysis Services project in Visual Studio. To proceed, ensure that you have an accessible SSAS instance and have installed the ADO.NET Provider.

Creating a Data Source for Amazon Athena

Start by creating a new Analysis Service Multidimensional and Data Mining Project in Visual Studio. Next, create a Data Source for Amazon Athena data in the project.

1. In the Solution Explorer, right-click Data Source and select New Data Source.
2. Opt to create a data source based on an existing or new connection and click New.
3. In the Connection Manager, select CData ADO.NET Provider for Amazon Athena, enter the necessary connection properties, and click Next.

   Authenticating to Amazon Athena

   To authorize Amazon Athena requests, provide the credentials for an administrator account or for an IAM user with custom permissions: Set AccessKey to the access key Id. Set SecretKey to the secret access key.

   Note: Though you can connect as the AWS account administrator, it is recommended to use IAM user credentials to access AWS services.

   Obtaining the Access Key

   To obtain the credentials for an IAM user, follow the steps below:

   1. Sign into the IAM console.
   2. In the navigation pane, select Users.
   3. To create or manage the access keys for a user, select the user and then select the Security Credentials tab.

   To obtain the credentials for your AWS root account, follow the steps below:

   1. Sign into the AWS Management console with the credentials for your root account.
   2. Select your account name or number and select My Security Credentials in the menu that is displayed.
   3. Click Continue to Security Credentials and expand the Access Keys section to manage or create root account access keys.

   Authenticating from an EC2 Instance

   If you are using the CData Data Provider for Amazon Athena 2018 from an EC2 Instance and have an IAM Role assigned to the instance, you can use the IAM Role to authenticate. To do so, set UseEC2Roles to true and leave AccessKey and SecretKey empty. The CData Data Provider for Amazon Athena 2018 will automatically obtain your IAM Role credentials and authenticate with them.

   Authenticating as an AWS Role

   In many situations it may be preferable to use an IAM role for authentication instead of the direct security credentials of an AWS root user. An AWS role may be used instead by specifying the RoleARN. This will cause the CData Data Provider for Amazon Athena 2018 to attempt to retrieve credentials for the specified role. If you are connecting to AWS (instead of already being connected such as on an EC2 instance), you must additionally specify the AccessKey and SecretKey of an IAM user to assume the role for. Roles may not be used when specifying the AccessKey and SecretKey of an AWS root user.

   Authenticating with MFA

   For users and roles that require Multi-factor Authentication, specify the MFASerialNumber and MFAToken connection properties. This will cause the CData Data Provider for Amazon Athena 2018 to submit the MFA credentials in a request to retrieve temporary authentication credentials. Note that the duration of the temporary credentials may be controlled via the TemporaryTokenDuration (default 3600 seconds).

   Connecting to Amazon Athena

   In addition to the AccessKey and SecretKey properties, specify Database, S3StagingDirectory and Region. Set Region to the region where your Amazon Athena data is hosted. Set S3StagingDirectory to a folder in S3 where you would like to store the results of queries.

   If Database is not set in the connection, the data provider connects to the default database set in Amazon Athena.

   When you configure the connection, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

4. Set the impersonation method to Inherit and click Next.
5. Name the data source (CData Amazon Athena Source) and click Finish.

Creating a Data Source View

After you create the data source, create the data source view.

1. In the Solution Explorer, right-click Data Source Views and select New Data Source View.
2. Select the data source you just created (CData Amazon Athena Source) and click Next.
3. Choose a foreign key match pattern that matches your underlying data source and click Next.
4. Select Amazon Athena tables to add to the view and click Next.
5. Name the view and click Finish

Based on the foreign key match scheme, relationships in the underlying data will be automatically detected. You can view (and edit) these relationships by double clicking Data Source View.

Note that adding a secondary data source to the Data Source View is not supported. When working with multiple data sources, SSAS requires both sources to support remote queries via OpenRowset which is unavailable in the ADO.NET Provider.

Creating a Cube for Amazon Athena

The last step before you can process the project and deploy Amazon Athena data to SSAS is creating the cubes.

1. In the Solution Explorer, right-click Cubes and select New Cube
2. Select "Use existing tables" and click Next.
3. Select the tables that will be used for measure group tables and click Next.
4. Select the measures you want to include in the cube and click Next.
5. Select the dimensions to be created, based on the available tables, and click Next.
6. Review all of your selections and click Finish.

Process the Project

With the data source, data source view, and cube created, you are ready to deploy the cube to SSAS. To configure the target server and database, right-click the project and select properties. Navigate to deployment and configure the Server and Database properties in the Target section.

After configuring the target server and database, right-click the project and select Process. You may need to build and deploy the project as a part of this step. Once the project is built and deployed, click Run in the Process Database wizard.

Now you have an OLAP cube for Amazon Athena data in your SSAS instance, ready to be analyzed, reported, and viewed. Get started with a free, 30-day trial of the CData ADO.NET Provider for Amazon Athena.