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Using the CData ODBC Driver for Amazon Athena in PyCharm


Connect to Amazon Athena as an ODBC data source in PyCharm using the CData ODBC Driver for Amazon Athena.

The CData ODBC Drivers can be used in any environment that supports loading an ODBC Driver. In this tutorial we will explore using the CData ODBC Driver for Amazon Athena from within PyCharm. Included are steps for adding the CData ODBC Driver as a data source, as well as basic PyCharm code to query the data source and display results.

To begin, this tutorial will assume that you have already installed the CData ODBC Driver for Amazon Athena as well as PyCharm.

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


Add Pyodbc to the Project

Follow the steps below to add the pyodbc module to your project.

  1. Click File -> Settings to open the project settings window.
  2. Click Project Interpreter from the Project: YourProjectName menu.
  3. To add pyodbc, click the + button and enter pyodbc.
  4. Click Install Package to install pyodbc.

Connect to Amazon Athena

You can now connect with an ODBC connection string or a DSN. See the Getting Started section in the CData driver documentation for a guide to creating a DSN on your OS.

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.

Below is the syntax for a DSN:

[CData AmazonAthena Source] Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Amazon Athena Description = My Description AWSAccessKey = 'a123' AWSSecretKey = 's123' AWSRegion = 'IRELAND' Database = 'sampledb' S3StagingDirectory = 's3://bucket/staging/'

Execute SQL to Amazon Athena

Instantiate a Cursor and use the execute method of the Cursor class to execute any SQL statement.

import pyodbc cnxn = pyodbc.connect('DRIVER={CData ODBC Driver for AmazonAthena};AWSAccessKey = 'a123';AWSSecretKey = 's123';AWSRegion = 'IRELAND';Database = 'sampledb';S3StagingDirectory = 's3://bucket/staging/';') cursor = cnxn.cursor() cursor.execute("SELECT Name, TotalDue FROM Customers WHERE CustomerId = '12345'") rows = cursor.fetchall() for row in rows: print(row.Name, row.TotalDue)

After connecting to Amazon Athena in PyCharm using the CData ODBC Driver, you will be able to build Python apps with access to Amazon Athena data as if it were a standard database. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback regarding this tutorial, please contact us at [email protected].

Ready to get started?

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

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Learn more:

Amazon Athena Icon Amazon Athena ODBC Driver

The Amazon Athena ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from Amazon Athena, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access Amazon Athena interactive query services data like you would a database, through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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