Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the Amazon Athena Driver to get started:

 Download Now

Learn more:

Amazon Athena Icon Amazon Athena JDBC Driver

Rapidly create and deploy powerful Java applications that integrate with Amazon Athena.

ETL Amazon Athena in Oracle Data Integrator



This article shows how to transfer Amazon Athena data into a data warehouse using Oracle Data Integrator.

Leverage existing skills by using the JDBC standard to read and write to Amazon Athena: Through drop-in integration into ETL tools like Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), the CData JDBC Driver for Amazon Athena connects real-time Amazon Athena data to your data warehouse, business intelligence, and Big Data technologies.

JDBC connectivity enables you to work with Amazon Athena just as you would any other database in ODI. As with an RDBMS, you can use the driver to connect directly to the Amazon Athena APIs in real time instead of working with flat files.

This article walks through a JDBC-based ETL -- Amazon Athena to Oracle. After reverse engineering a data model of Amazon Athena entities, you will create a mapping and select a data loading strategy -- since the driver supports SQL-92, this last step can easily be accomplished by selecting the built-in SQL to SQL Loading Knowledge Module.

Install the Driver

To install the driver, copy the driver JAR and .lic file, located in the installation folder, into the ODI appropriate directory:

  • UNIX/Linux without Agent: ~/.odi/oracledi/userlib
  • UNIX/Linux with Agent: $ODI_HOME/odi/agent/lib
  • Windows without Agent: %APPDATA%\Roaming\odi\oracledi\userlib
  • Windows with Agent: %APPDATA%\Roaming\odi\agent\lib

Restart ODI to complete the installation.

Reverse Engineer a Model

Reverse engineering the model retrieves metadata about the driver's relational view of Amazon Athena data. After reverse engineering, you can query real-time Amazon Athena data and create mappings based on Amazon Athena tables.

  1. In ODI, connect to your repository and click New -> Model and Topology Objects.
  2. On the Model screen of the resulting dialog, enter the following information:
    • Name: Enter AmazonAthena.
    • Technology: Select Generic SQL (for ODI Version 12.2+, select Microsoft SQL Server).
    • Logical Schema: Enter AmazonAthena.
    • Context: Select Global.
  3. On the Data Server screen of the resulting dialog, enter the following information:
    • Name: Enter AmazonAthena.
    • Driver List: Select Oracle JDBC Driver.
    • Driver: Enter cdata.jdbc.amazonathena.AmazonAthenaDriver
    • URL: Enter the JDBC URL containing the connection string.

      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.

      Below is a typical connection string:

      jdbc:amazonathena:AccessKey='a123';SecretKey='s123';Region='IRELAND';Database='sampledb';S3StagingDirectory='s3://bucket/staging/';
  4. On the Physical Schema screen, enter the following information:
    • Name: Select from the Drop Down menu.
    • Database (Catalog): Enter CData.
    • Owner (Schema): If you select a Schema for Amazon Athena, enter the Schema selected, otherwise enter AmazonAthena.
    • Database (Work Catalog): Enter CData.
    • Owner (Work Schema): If you select a Schema for Amazon Athena, enter the Schema selected, otherwise enter AmazonAthena.
  5. In the opened model click Reverse Engineer to retrieve the metadata for Amazon Athena tables.

Edit and Save Amazon Athena Data

After reverse engineering you can now work with Amazon Athena data in ODI. To edit and save Amazon Athena data, expand the Models accordion in the Designer navigator, right-click a table, and click Data. Click Refresh to pick up any changes to the data. Click Save Changes when you are finished making changes.

Create an ETL Project

Follow the steps below to create an ETL from Amazon Athena. You will load Customers entities into the sample data warehouse included in the ODI Getting Started VM.

  1. Open SQL Developer and connect to your Oracle database. Right-click the node for your database in the Connections pane and click new SQL Worksheet.

    Alternatively you can use SQLPlus. From a command prompt enter the following:

    sqlplus / as sysdba
  2. Enter the following query to create a new target table in the sample data warehouse, which is in the ODI_DEMO schema. The following query defines a few columns that match the Customers table in Amazon Athena: CREATE TABLE ODI_DEMO.TRG_CUSTOMERS (TOTALDUE NUMBER(20,0),Name VARCHAR2(255));
  3. In ODI expand the Models accordion in the Designer navigator and double-click the Sales Administration node in the ODI_DEMO folder. The model is opened in the Model Editor.
  4. Click Reverse Engineer. The TRG_CUSTOMERS table is added to the model.
  5. Right-click the Mappings node in your project and click New Mapping. Enter a name for the mapping and clear the Create Empty Dataset option. The Mapping Editor is displayed.
  6. Drag the TRG_CUSTOMERS table from the Sales Administration model onto the mapping.
  7. Drag the Customers table from the Amazon Athena model onto the mapping.
  8. Click the source connector point and drag to the target connector point. The Attribute Matching dialog is displayed. For this example, use the default options. The target expressions are then displayed in the properties for the target columns.
  9. Open the Physical tab of the Mapping Editor and click CUSTOMERS_AP in TARGET_GROUP.
  10. In the CUSTOMERS_AP properties, select LKM SQL to SQL (Built-In) on the Loading Knowledge Module tab.

You can then run the mapping to load Amazon Athena data into Oracle.