Integrate Devin with Live Amazon Athena Data Using CData Connect AI
Devin is an AI software engineer from Cognition that plans, writes, and tests code in autonomous sessions. It supports the model context protocol (MCP) through its built-in MCP marketplace, allowing you to install remote MCP servers and give Devin access to external tools and live data sources.
By integrating Devin with CData Connect AI through the built-in MCP Server, Devin gains governed, real-time access to live Amazon Athena data. You can list catalogs, explore schemas, and query records from Amazon Athena data using natural language prompts, with all data access running securely against authorized sources.
This article explains how to configure Amazon Athena connectivity in Connect AI, install the CData Connect AI MCP Server from the Devin MCP marketplace, and verify the integration by querying live Amazon Athena data from a Devin session.
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
Step 1: Configure Amazon Athena connectivity for Devin
Connectivity to Amazon Athena from Devin is made possible through Connect AI's Remote MCP Server. To interact with Amazon Athena data from Devin, start by creating and configuring a Amazon Athena connection in Connect AI.
- Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
- Select Amazon Athena from the Add Connection panel
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Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Amazon Athena.
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:
- Sign into the IAM console.
- In the navigation pane, select Users.
- 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:
- Sign into the AWS Management console with the credentials for your root account.
- Select your account name or number and select My Security Credentials in the menu that is displayed.
- 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.
- Click Save & Test
- Navigate to the Permissions tab and update user-based permissions
With the Amazon Athena connection configured, Devin can now connect to Amazon Athena data through Connect AI.
Step 2: Install the Connect AI MCP Server in Devin
Next, install the CData Connect AI MCP Server from the Devin MCP servers list so your sessions can discover and call live data tools through Connect AI.
Note: Installing MCP servers in Devin requires the Manage MCP Servers permission. If you don't have this permission, use the Suggest option or contact your organization admin.
- Log into Devin and navigate to Settings and Connections, then select the MCP servers tab
- Search for CData Connect AI in the marketplace and select the verified listing
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Click Install and enable. When prompted, complete the OAuth flow to authenticate with your Connect AI account
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Once installed, confirm the Enable in sessions toggle is on and click Test tools. Devin validates the connection and lists the available Connect AI tools, such as getCatalogs, getSchemas, getTables, and queryData
With the MCP server installed and enabled, the Connect AI tools are available to every Devin session in your workspace.
Step 3: Query live Amazon Athena data from Devin
With the integration complete, start a Devin session and interact with live Amazon Athena data through natural language prompts.
- From the Devin home page, start a new session
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In the session prompt, ask Devin to work with your Connect AI data, for example:
- Can you list the connections in CData Connect AI
- Show the available schemas and tables for Amazon Athena
- Query the top 5 records from a table in Amazon Athena
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Devin calls the Connect AI MCP Server and returns live results from Amazon Athena data directly in the session. You can follow the tool calls, inputs, and outputs in the Progress panel
At this point, Devin communicates with the Connect AI MCP Server and retrieves live Amazon Athena data through remote MCP tools directly from your sessions, whether you're exploring data, building features against it, or automating engineering tasks.
Get started with CData Connect AI
To access hundreds of SaaS, big data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect AI today. Download a free 14-day trial of CData Connect AI, and our Support Team is available to help with any questions you have.