How to update Amazon Athena from Excel

The CData Excel Add-In for Amazon Athena enables you to edit and save Amazon Athena data directly from Excel. This article explains how to transfer data from Excel to Amazon Athena. This technique is useful if you want to work on Amazon Athena data in Excel and update changes, or if you have a whole spreadsheet you want to import into Amazon Athena. In this example, you will use the Customers table; however, the same process will work for any table that can be retrieved by the CData Excel Add-In.

Establish a Connection

If you have not already done so, create a new Amazon Athena connection by clicking From Amazon Athena on the ribbon.

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.

Retrieve Data from Amazon Athena

To insert data into Amazon Athena, you will first need to retrieve data from the Amazon Athena table you want to add to. This links the Excel spreadsheet to the Amazon Athena table selected: After you retrieve data, any changes you make to the data are highlighted in red.

1. Click the From Amazon Athena button on the CData ribbon. The Data Selection wizard is displayed.
2. In the Table or View menu, select the Customers table.
3. In the Maximum Rows menu, select the number of rows you want to retrieve. If you want to insert rows, you need to retrieve only one row. The Query box will then display the SQL query that corresponds to your request.
4. In the Sheet Name box, enter the name for the sheet that will be populated. By default the add-in will create a new sheet with the name of the table.

Insert Rows to Amazon Athena

After retrieving data, you can add data from an existing spreadsheet in Excel.

1. In a cell after the last row, enter a formula referencing the corresponding cell from the other spreadsheet; for example, =MyCustomersSheetInExcel!A1.
2. After using a formula to reference the cells you want to add to Amazon Athena, select the cells that you are inserting data into and drag the formula down as far as needed. The referenced values you want to add will be displayed on the Customers sheet.
3. Highlight the rows you want to insert and click the Update Rows button.

As each row is inserted, the Id value will appear in the Id column and the row's text will change to black, indicating that the record has been inserted.