Connect to Amazon Athena Data from PowerBuilder



This article demonstrates how to access Amazon Athena data from Appeon PowerBuilder using the CData ADO.NET Provider for Amazon Athena.

This article demonstrates using the CData ADO.NET Provider for Amazon Athena in PowerBuilder, showcasing the ease of use and compatibility of these standards-based controls across various platforms and development technologies that support Microsoft .NET, including Appeon PowerBuilder.

This article shows how to create a basic PowerBuilder application that uses the CData ADO.NET Provider for Amazon Athena to perform reads and writes.

About Amazon Athena Data Integration

CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from Amazon Athena. Customers use CData connectivity to:

  • Authenticate securely using a variety of methods, including IAM credentials, access keys, and Instance Profiles, catering to diverse security needs and simplifying the authentication process.
  • Streamline their setup and quickly resolve issue with detailed error messaging.
  • Enhance performance and minimize strain on client resources with server-side query execution.

Users frequently integrate Athena with analytics tools like Tableau, Power BI, and Excel for in-depth analytics from their preferred tools.

To learn more about unique Amazon Athena use cases with CData, check out our blog post: https://www.cdata.com/blog/amazon-athena-use-cases.


Getting Started


  1. In a new WPF Window Application solution, add all the Visual Controls needed for the connection properties. Below is a typical connection string:

    AWSAccessKey='a123';AWSSecretKey='s123';AWSRegion='IRELAND';Database='sampledb';S3StagingDirectory='s3://bucket/staging/';

    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.

  2. Add the DataGrid control from the .NET controls.
  3. Configure the columns of the DataGrid control. Below are several columns from the Account table: <DataGrid AutoGenerateColumns="False" Margin="13,249,12,14" Name="datagrid1" TabIndex="70" ItemsSource="{Binding}"> <DataGrid.Columns> <DataGridTextColumn x:Name="idColumn" Binding="{Binding Path=Id}" Header="Id" Width="SizeToHeader" /> <DataGridTextColumn x:Name="nameColumn" Binding="{Binding Path=Name}" Header="Name" Width="SizeToHeader" /> ... </DataGrid.Columns> </DataGrid>
  4. Add a reference to the CData ADO.NET Provider for Amazon Athena assembly.

Connect the DataGrid

Once the visual elements have been configured, you can use standard ADO.NET objects like Connection, Command, and DataAdapter to populate a DataTable with the results of an SQL query:

System.Data.CData.AmazonAthena.AmazonAthenaConnection conn conn = create System.Data.CData.AmazonAthena.AmazonAthenaConnection(connectionString) System.Data.CData.AmazonAthena.AmazonAthenaCommand comm comm = create System.Data.CData.AmazonAthena.AmazonAthenaCommand(command, conn) System.Data.DataTable table table = create System.Data.DataTable System.Data.CData.AmazonAthena.AmazonAthenaDataAdapter dataAdapter dataAdapter = create System.Data.CData.AmazonAthena.AmazonAthenaDataAdapter(comm) dataAdapter.Fill(table) datagrid1.ItemsSource=table.DefaultView

The code above can be used to bind data from the specified query to the DataGrid.

Ready to get started?

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