Import Real-Time Amazon Athena Data in ColdFusion to Build Applications

Adobe ColdFusion is a web and mobile application development platform. It uses its own scripting language, ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML), to create data-driven websites as well as generate remote services, such as REST. When ColdFusion is paired with the CData ODBC Driver for Amazon Athena, you can link your ColdFusion web and mobile applications to operational Amazon Athena data. This allows for your applications to be more robust and complete. This article details how to use the ODBC driver to create a table populated with Amazon Athena data from within a ColdFusion markup file.

To follow along with this tutorial, you need to install the CData ODBC Driver for Amazon Athena and Adobe ColdFusion.

Configuring the Connection

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (Data Source Name). This is the last step of the driver installation process. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

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.

Adding a Data Source and Creating a Table

After creating a DSN, follow the steps below to add a new data source, test our connection to it, create a ColdFusion markup file, and, finally, import Amazon Athena Amazon Athena data and display it in a table in ColdFusion:

1. From the ColdFusion administrator interface, choose Data & Services.
2. Here, click "Add New Data Source". The data source name can be any name, provided it conforms to the ColdFusion variable naming conventions. For our ODBC driver, choose "ODBC Socket", then click the "Add" button.
3. From the ODBC DSN Dropdown menu select CData Amazon Athena Sys. Under the Advanced Settings section, leave the Connection String blank. Note that any properties specified in this input field will override the ones specified in the DSN Configuration.
4. Now, test the connection by pressing the check mark to the left of the CDataAmazon AthenaODBC data source you just created. When the data source reports an "OK" status, it is ready for use.
5. Next, create a new ColdFusion Markup file (.cfm) and place it in the wwwroot directory ("C:\ColdFusion2021\cfusion\wwwroot") for ColdFusion.

   The following code queries the data source:

               
           <cfquery name="Amazon AthenaQuery" dataSource="CDataAmazon AthenaODBC"> 
             SELECT * FROM Customers 
           </cfquery> 
       

   And a CFTable can be used to quickly output the table in HTML:

               
             <cftable  
             query = "Amazon AthenaQuery" 
             border = "1" 
             colHeaders 
             colSpacing = "2" 
             headerLines = "2" 
             HTMLTable 
             maxRows = "500" 
             startRow = "1"> 
   
             <cfcol header="<b>Name</b>" align="Left" width=2 text="Name"/> 
   
             <cfcol header="<b>TotalDue</b>" align="Left" width=15 text="TotalDue"/> 
   
             ...
   
           </cftable> 
       

   Full code, including the HTML portion is available below:

               
           <html> 
           <head><title>CData Software | Amazon Athena Customers Table Demo </title></head> 
           <body> 
           <cfoutput>#ucase("Amazon Athena Customers Table Demo")#</cfoutput> 
           <cfquery name="Amazon AthenaQuery" dataSource="CDataAmazon AthenaODBC"> 
   
             SELECT * FROM Customers 
   
           </cfquery> 
           <cftable  
             query = "Amazon AthenaQuery" 
             border = "1" 
             colHeaders 
             colSpacing = "2" 
             headerLines = "2" 
             HTMLTable 
             maxRows = "500" 
             startRow = "1"> 
             <cfcol header="<b>Name</b>" align="Left" width=2 text="Name"/> 
   
             <cfcol header="<b>TotalDue</b>" align="Left" width=15 text="TotalDue"/> 
   
             ...
   
           </cftable> 
           </body> 
   
           </html>  
       

6. Finally, run the code in a browser. It produces a table populated with Amazon Athena data!

As a note, the CData ODBC Drivers also support parameterized queries using the cfqueryparam element. For example: SELECT * FROM Account WHERE name =

Get Started Today

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData ODBC Driver for Amazon Athena and start building Amazon Athena-connected applications with Adobe ColdFusion. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.