Amazon Athena Redshift connector - Amazon Athena
PrerequisitesLimitationsTermsParametersData type supportPartitions and splitsPerformancePassthrough queriesAdditional resources

Amazon Athena Redshift connector

The Amazon Athena Redshift connector enables Amazon Athena to access your Amazon Redshift and Amazon Redshift Serverless databases, including Redshift Serverless views. You can connect to either service using the JDBC connection string configuration settings described on this page.

This connector can be registered with Glue Data Catalog as a federated catalog. It supports data access controls defined in Lake Formation at the catalog, database, table, column, row, and tag levels. This connector uses Glue Connections to centralize configuration properties in Glue.

Prerequisites

Limitations

  • Write DDL operations are not supported.

  • In a multiplexer setup, the spill bucket and prefix are shared across all database instances.

  • Any relevant Lambda limits. For more information, see Lambda quotas in the AWS Lambda Developer Guide.

  • Because Redshift does not support external partitions, all data specified by a query is retrieved every time.

  • Like Redshift, Athena treats trailing spaces in Redshift CHAR types as semantically insignificant for length and comparison purposes. Note that this applies only to CHAR but not to VARCHAR types. Athena ignores trailing spaces for the CHAR type, but treats them as significant for the VARCHAR type.

Terms

The following terms relate to the Redshift connector.

  • Database instance – Any instance of a database deployed on premises, on Amazon EC2, or on Amazon RDS.

  • Handler – A Lambda handler that accesses your database instance. A handler can be for metadata or for data records.

  • Metadata handler – A Lambda handler that retrieves metadata from your database instance.

  • Record handler – A Lambda handler that retrieves data records from your database instance.

  • Composite handler – A Lambda handler that retrieves both metadata and data records from your database instance.

  • Property or parameter – A database property used by handlers to extract database information. You configure these properties as Lambda environment variables.

  • Connection String – A string of text used to establish a connection to a database instance.

  • Catalog – A non-AWS Glue catalog registered with Athena that is a required prefix for the connection_string property.

  • Multiplexing handler – A Lambda handler that can accept and use multiple database connections.

Parameters

Use the parameters in this section to configure the Redshift connector.

Note

Athena data source connectors created on December 3, 2024 and later use AWS Glue connections.

The parameter names and definitions listed below are for Athena data source connectors created prior to December 3, 2024. These can differ from their corresponding AWS Glue connection properties. Starting December 3, 2024, use the parameters below only when you manually deploy an earlier version of an Athena data source connector.

Connection string

Use a JDBC connection string in the following format to connect to a database instance.

redshift://${jdbc_connection_string}

Using a multiplexing handler

You can use a multiplexer to connect to multiple database instances with a single Lambda function. Requests are routed by catalog name. Use the following classes in Lambda.

Handler Class
Composite handler RedshiftMuxCompositeHandler
Metadata handler RedshiftMuxMetadataHandler
Record handler RedshiftMuxRecordHandler

Multiplexing handler parameters

Parameter Description
$catalog_connection_string Required. A database instance connection string. Prefix the environment variable with the name of the catalog used in Athena. For example, if the catalog registered with Athena is myredshiftcatalog, then the environment variable name is myredshiftcatalog_connection_string.
default Required. The default connection string. This string is used when the catalog is lambda:${AWS_LAMBDA_FUNCTION_NAME}.

The following example properties are for a Redshift MUX Lambda function that supports two database instances: redshift1 (the default), and redshift2.

Property Value
default redshift://jdbc:redshift://redshift1.host:5439/dev?user=sample2&password=sample2
redshift_catalog1_connection_string redshift://jdbc:redshift://redshift1.host:3306/default?${Test/RDS/Redshift1}
redshift_catalog2_connection_string redshift://jdbc:redshift://redshift2.host:3333/default?user=sample2&password=sample2

Providing credentials

To provide a user name and password for your database in your JDBC connection string, you can use connection string properties or AWS Secrets Manager.

  • Connection String – A user name and password can be specified as properties in the JDBC connection string.

    Important

    As a security best practice, do not use hardcoded credentials in your environment variables or connection strings. For information about moving your hardcoded secrets to AWS Secrets Manager, see Move hardcoded secrets to AWS Secrets Manager in the AWS Secrets Manager User Guide.

  • AWS Secrets Manager – To use the Athena Federated Query feature with AWS Secrets Manager, the VPC connected to your Lambda function should have internet access or a VPC endpoint to connect to Secrets Manager.

    You can put the name of a secret in AWS Secrets Manager in your JDBC connection string. The connector replaces the secret name with the username and password values from Secrets Manager.

    For Amazon RDS database instances, this support is tightly integrated. If you use Amazon RDS, we highly recommend using AWS Secrets Manager and credential rotation. If your database does not use Amazon RDS, store the credentials as JSON in the following format:

    {"username": "${username}", "password": "${password}"}
Example connection string with secret name

The following string has the secret name ${Test/RDS/ Redshift1}.

redshift://jdbc:redshift://redshift1.host:3306/default?...&${Test/RDS/Redshift1}&...

The connector uses the secret name to retrieve secrets and provide the user name and password, as in the following example.

redshift://jdbc:redshift://redshift1.host:3306/default?...&user=sample2&password=sample2&...

Currently, the Redshift connector recognizes the user and password JDBC properties.

Spill parameters

The Lambda SDK can spill data to Amazon S3. All database instances accessed by the same Lambda function spill to the same location.

Parameter Description
spill_bucket Required. Spill bucket name.
spill_prefix Required. Spill bucket key prefix.
spill_put_request_headers (Optional) A JSON encoded map of request headers and values for the Amazon S3 putObject request that is used for spilling (for example, {"x-amz-server-side-encryption" : "AES256"}). For other possible headers, see PutObject in the Amazon Simple Storage Service API Reference.

Data type support

The following table shows the corresponding data types for JDBC and Apache Arrow.

JDBC Arrow
Boolean Bit
Integer Tiny
Short Smallint
Integer Int
Long Bigint
float Float4
Double Float8
Date DateDay
Timestamp DateMilli
String Varchar
Bytes Varbinary
BigDecimal Decimal
ARRAY List

Partitions and splits

Redshift does not support external partitions. For information about performance related issues, see Performance.

Performance

The Athena Redshift connector performs predicate pushdown to decrease the data scanned by the query. LIMIT clauses, ORDER BY clauses, simple predicates, and complex expressions are pushed down to the connector to reduce the amount of data scanned and decrease query execution run time. However, selecting a subset of columns sometimes results in a longer query execution runtime. Amazon Redshift is particularly susceptible to query execution slowdown when you run multiple queries concurrently.

LIMIT clauses

A LIMIT N statement reduces the data scanned by the query. With LIMIT N pushdown, the connector returns only N rows to Athena.

Top N queries

A top N query specifies an ordering of the result set and a limit on the number of rows returned. You can use this type of query to determine the top N max values or top N min values for your datasets. With top N pushdown, the connector returns only N ordered rows to Athena.

Predicates

A predicate is an expression in the WHERE clause of a SQL query that evaluates to a Boolean value and filters rows based on multiple conditions. The Athena Redshift connector can combine these expressions and push them directly to Redshift for enhanced functionality and to reduce the amount of data scanned.

The following Athena Redshift connector operators support predicate pushdown:

  • Boolean: AND, OR, NOT

  • Equality: EQUAL, NOT_EQUAL, LESS_THAN, LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL, GREATER_THAN, GREATER_THAN_OR_EQUAL, IS_DISTINCT_FROM, NULL_IF, IS_NULL

  • Arithmetic: ADD, SUBTRACT, MULTIPLY, DIVIDE, MODULUS, NEGATE

  • Other: LIKE_PATTERN, IN

Combined pushdown example

For enhanced querying capabilities, combine the pushdown types, as in the following example:

SELECT * 
FROM my_table 
WHERE col_a > 10 
    AND ((col_a + col_b) > (col_c % col_d)) 
    AND (col_e IN ('val1', 'val2', 'val3') OR col_f LIKE '%pattern%') 
ORDER BY col_a DESC 
LIMIT 10;

For an article on using predicate pushdown to improve performance in federated queries, including Amazon Redshift, see Improve federated queries with predicate pushdown in Amazon Athena in the AWS Big Data Blog.

Passthrough queries

The Redshift connector supports passthrough queries. Passthrough queries use a table function to push your full query down to the data source for execution.

To use passthrough queries with Redshift, you can use the following syntax:

SELECT * FROM TABLE(
        system.query(
            query => 'query string'
        ))

The following example query pushes down a query to a data source in Redshift. The query selects all columns in the customer table, limiting the results to 10.

SELECT * FROM TABLE(
        system.query(
            query => 'SELECT * FROM customer LIMIT 10'
        ))

Additional resources

For the latest JDBC driver version information, see the pom.xml file for the Redshift connector on GitHub.com.

For additional information about this connector, visit the corresponding site on GitHub.com.