Discover how a bimodal integration strategy can address the major data management challenges facing your organization today.
Get the Report →Publish Amazon Athena-Connected Dashboards in Tableau Server
Use CData Tableau Connectors and Tableau Server to visualize live Amazon Athena data.
Tableau Server is a visual analytics platform transforming the way businesses use data to solve problems. When paired with the CData Tableau Connector for Amazon Athena, you get access to live Amazon Athena data within Tableau Server. This article shows how to connect to Amazon Athena in Tableau Desktop, publish a Data Source to Tableau Server, and build a simple chart from that data.
The CData Tableau Connectors enable high-speed access to live Amazon Athena data in Tableau Server. Once you install the connector, you simply authenticate with Amazon Athena and you can immediately start building responsive, dynamic visualizations and dashboards. By surfacing Amazon Athena data using native Tableau data types and handling complex filters, aggregations, & other operations automatically, CData Tableau Connectors grant seamless access to Amazon Athena data.
NOTE: The CData Tableau Connectors require Tableau 2020.3 or higher. If you are using an older version of Tableau, you will need to use the CData Tableau Connector for Amazon Athena. If you wish to connect to Amazon Athena data in Tableau Cloud, you will need to use CData Connect Cloud.
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
Enable Connectivity to Amazon Athena in Tableau Server
Start by installing the CData Tableau Connector on the machine hosting Tableau Server.
Installation on a Linux Machine:
- Unpack the setup.zip archive. Creating a directory for the connector like /opt/cdata/amazonathena is recommended, but the exact install location does not matter.
- Navigate to the lib subdirectory under the install directory. Generate a license file by running this command and following the prompts:
java -jar cdata.tableau.amazonathena.jar -l
- Copy cdata.tableau.amazonathena.jar and cdata.tableau.amazonathena.lic into the drivers directory, /opt/tableau/tableau_driver/jdbc.
- Copy cdata.amazonathena.taco into the connectors directory, MyTableauServerRootDir/data/tabsvc/vizqlserver/Connectors. In most cases MyTableauServerRootDir is located at /var/opt/tableau/tableau_server.
- Restart Tableau Server.
If you cannot execute the java commmand from step 2, you will need to install a Java runtime environment. The name of this package differs on Red Hat-based and Debian-based systems:
OS | Java Package |
---|---|
Ubuntu | openjdk-8-jre-headless |
Debian | openjdk-8-jre-headless |
RHEL | java-1.8.0-openjdk |
CentOS | java-1.8.0-openjdk |
Fedora | java-1.8.0-openjdk |
SUSE | java-1_8_0-openjdk |
You can substitute Java 8 with a later Java release as needed.
Installation on a Windows Machine:
- Run the setup.exe installer. The driver JAR file will be automatically placed in the drivers directory, C:\Program Files\Tableau\Drivers.
- Navigate to the lib folder under the installation directory. By default the installation directory is a folder in C:\Program Files\CData.
- Copy cdata.tableau.amazonathena.lic into the drivers directory.
- Copy cdata.tableau.amazonathena.taco into the connectors directory, MyTableauServerRootDir/data/tabsvc/vizqlserver/Connectors. In most cases MyTableauServerRootDir is located under C:\ProgramData.
- Restart Tableau Server.
Connect to Amazon Athena in Tableau Desktop
Once the connectors are installed on the Server machine, we can configure a connection to Amazon Athena in Tableau Desktop and publish a Amazon Athena-based Data Source to Tableau Server.
- Open Tableau Desktop.
- Click More under Connect -> To a Server.
- Select "Amazon Athena by CData".
- Configure the connection to the data.
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:
- Sign into the IAM console.
- In the navigation pane, select Users.
- 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:
- Sign into the AWS Management console with the credentials for your root account.
- Select your account name or number and select My Security Credentials in the menu that is displayed.
- 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.
- Click "Sign In".
Discover Schemas and Query Data
Once you establish the connection to Amazon Athena data, you can configure which entities to visualize.
- Select CData from the Database pull-down menu.
- Select AmazonAthena from the Schema pull-down menu.
- Drag the tables and views you wish to visualize onto the join area. You can include multiple tables.
- Select Update Now or Automatically Update. Update Now lets you preview the first 10,000 rows of the data source (or enter the number of rows you want to see in the Rows text box). Automatically Update auto-loads the changes in the preview area.
Publish Data to Tableau Server
After you configure the data you wish to visualize, you can publish the Data Source to a Tableau Server instance. In Tableau Desktop:
- Click Server -> Sign In.
- Enter the URL for your Tableau Server.
- Authenticate with Tableau Server credentials.
- Click Server -> Publish Data Source and select your data source.
- Click Publish.
- Select the Project, name the Data Source, and optionally add a description.
- Click Publish.
This creates a new entry under the server's data source list, from which you an change the data source's permissions, view its history, and perform other management tasks.
Note that workstation connected to the same server will be able to use the same source in Tableau Desktop, even if the connector isn't installed there. Also, workbooks created directly on Tableau Server (via the web interface) can use this source.
Visualize Amazon Athena Data in Tableau Server
With the Data Source published to Tableau Server, you are ready to visualize Amazon Athena data.
- Login to your Tableau Server instance.
- Connect to the remote source using the Search for Data -> Tableau Server in the Connect sidebar.
- Click the published Data Source.
- Click New Workbook.
- In the workbook, Amazon Athena fields are listed as Dimensions and Measures, depending on the data type. The CData Tableau Connector discovers data types automatically, allowing you to leverage the powerful data processing and visualization features of Tableau.
- Drag a field from the Dimensions or Measures area to Rows or Columns. Tableau creates column or row headers.
- Select one of the chart types from the Show Me tab. Tableau displays the chart type that you selected.
Using the CData Tableau Connector for Amazon Athena with Tableau Server, you can easily create robust visualizations and reports on Amazon Athena data. Download a free, 30-day trial and get started today.