Query Amazon Athena Data in ColdFusion

The CData JDBC Driver for Amazon Athena seamlessly integrates connectivity to Amazon Athena data with the rapid development tools in ColdFusion. This article shows how to connect to Amazon Athena data in ColdFusion and query Amazon Athena tables.

Create a JDBC Data Source for Amazon Athena in ColdFusion

The JDBC data source enables you to execute SQL from standard ColdFusion tags like cfquery and CFScript like executeQuery.

1. Copy the driver JAR and .lic file from the installation directory onto the ColdFusion classpath. For example, copy the files into C:\MyColdFusionDirectory\cfusion\wwwroot\WEB-INF\lib. Or, open the Java and JVM page in the ColdFusion Administrator and enter the path to the files in the ColdFusion Class Path box.

   The JAR and license for the driver are located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.

   Restart the server after this step.

2. Add the driver as a data source:

   From the ColdFusion administrator interface, expand the Data & Services node and click Data Sources. In the Add New Data Source section, enter a name for the data source and select Other in the Driver menu.

3. Populate the driver properties:

   • JDBC URL: Enter connection properties in the JDBC URL. The JDBC URL begins with jdbc:amazonathena: and is followed by the connection properties in a semicolon-separated list of name=value pairs.

     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.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

     For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Amazon Athena JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

     java -jar cdata.jdbc.amazonathena.jar

     Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

     A typical JDBC URL is below:

     jdbc:amazonathena:AccessKey='a123';SecretKey='s123';Region='IRELAND';Database='sampledb';S3StagingDirectory='s3://bucket/staging/';
   • Driver Class: Enter the driver class. The driver class is cdata.jdbc.amazonathena.AmazonAthenaDriver.
   • Driver Name: Enter a user-defined name for the driver.
   • Username: Enter the username used to authenticate.
   • Password: Enter the password used to authenticate.

You can now test the connection by enabling the CData Amazon Athena data source in the Actions column. After reporting a status of OK, the Amazon Athena data source is ready for use.

Execute Queries

The cfquery tag can pass SQL statements to Amazon Athena, including INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE.. Use the cfqueryparam tag to create parameterized queries and prevent SQL injection through the query string.

Note: To use the cfquery and cfscript, create a .cfm file. Inside the .cfm file, write the code to execute the query (see below). Place the file directly in the root directory of your web server (e.g., wwwroot in Adobe ColdFusion). Restart the service after placing the file for the changes to take effect.

Below is the equivalent in CFScript:

<cfscript>
result = queryExecute(
  "SELECT * FROM Customers WHERE CustomerId = ?", 
  [
    { value="12345", cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" }
  ],
  { datasource="CDataAmazonAthena" }
);

writeDump( var= result );
</cfscript> 

You can then make requests to your .cfm like the following: