Access Live Amazon Athena Data in Google Sheets



Use CData Connect Cloud to gain access to live Amazon Athena data from your Google Sheets.

Google Sheets is a web-based spreadsheet program provided by Google. When integrated with CData Connect Cloud, you can effortlessly gain access to Amazon Athena data directly within Google Sheets for tasks such as data analysis, collaboration, calculations, and more. This article offers a comprehensive guide on connecting to Amazon Athena within your Connect Cloud instance and accessing live Amazon Athena data seamlessly within Google Sheets.

CData Connect Cloud offers a seamless cloud-to-cloud interface designed for Amazon Athena, enabling effortless access to live Amazon Athena data directly within Google Sheets. Use the dedicated Connect Cloud Google Sheets Plug-In to connect with live Amazon Athena data. With built-in optimized data processing, CData Connect Cloud efficiently channels all supported query operations, including filters, JOINs, and more, directly to Amazon Athena. This leverages server-side processing to promptly retrieve the desired Amazon Athena data.

This setup requires a CData Connect Cloud instance and the CData Connect Cloud Add-On for Google Sheets. To get started, sign up a free trial of Connect Cloud and install the free Connect Cloud Google Sheets Add-On.


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


Configure Amazon Athena Connectivity for Google Sheets

Connectivity to Amazon Athena from Google Sheets is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with Amazon Athena data from Google Sheets, we start by creating and configuring a Amazon Athena connection.

  1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
  2. Select "Amazon Athena" from the Add Connection panel
  3. 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:

    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.

  4. Click Create & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Amazon Athena Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Amazon Athena data from Google Sheets.

Access Live Amazon Athena Data from Google Sheets

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Cloud from Google Sheets to access live Amazon Athena data.

  1. Log into Google Sheets, create a new sheet (or open an existing one).
  2. Click Add-ons and click Get Add-ons (if you have already installed the Add-on, jump to step 5).
  3. Search for CData Connect Cloud Add-On and install the Add-on.
  4. Authorize the Add-On.
  5. Back in Google Sheets, click Add-ons and open the CData Connect Cloud Add-On.
  6. In the Add-On panel, click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect Cloud instance
  7. In the CData Connect Cloud panel in Google Sheets, click Import
  8. Choose a Connection (e.g. AmazonAthena1), Table (e.g. Customers, and Columns to import
  9. Optionally add Filters, Sorting, and a Limit
  10. Click Execute to import the data

Live Access to Amazon Athena Data from Cloud Applications

New, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Amazon Athena data from your Google Sheets workbook. You can add more data to your workbook for calculations, aggregations, collaboration, and more.

Try CData Connect Cloud and get real-time data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.

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