Amazon Athena Teradata connector - Amazon Athena
PrerequisitesLimitationsTermsParametersData type supportPartitions and splitsPerformancePassthrough queriesLicense informationAdditional resources

Amazon Athena Teradata connector

The Amazon Athena connector for Teradata enables Athena to run SQL queries on data stored in your Teradata databases.

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.

Terms

The following terms relate to the Teradata 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 Lambda environment variables in this section to configure the Teradata connector.

Connection string

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

teradata://${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 TeradataMuxCompositeHandler
Metadata handler TeradataMuxMetadataHandler
Record handler TeradataMuxRecordHandler

Multiplexing handler parameters

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

The following example properties are for a Teradata MUX Lambda function that supports two database instances: teradata1 (the default), and teradata2.

Property Value
default teradata://jdbc:teradata://teradata2.host/TMODE=ANSI,CHARSET=UTF8,DATABASE=TEST,user=sample2&password=sample2
teradata_catalog1_connection_string teradata://jdbc:teradata://teradata1.host/TMODE=ANSI,CHARSET=UTF8,DATABASE=TEST,${Test/RDS/Teradata1}
teradata_catalog2_connection_string teradata://jdbc:teradata://teradata2.host/TMODE=ANSI,CHARSET=UTF8,DATABASE=TEST,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/Teradata1}.

teradata://jdbc:teradata1.host/TMODE=ANSI,CHARSET=UTF8,DATABASE=TEST,${Test/RDS/Teradata1}&...

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

teradata://jdbc:teradata://teradata1.host/TMODE=ANSI,CHARSET=UTF8,DATABASE=TEST,...&user=sample2&password=sample2&...

Currently, Teradata recognizes the user and password JDBC properties. It also accepts the user name and password in the format username/password without the keys user or password.

Using a single connection handler

You can use the following single connection metadata and record handlers to connect to a single Teradata instance.

Handler type Class
Composite handler TeradataCompositeHandler
Metadata handler TeradataMetadataHandler
Record handler TeradataRecordHandler

Single connection handler parameters

Parameter Description
default Required. The default connection string.

The single connection handlers support one database instance and must provide a default connection string parameter. All other connection strings are ignored.

The following example property is for a single Teradata instance supported by a Lambda function.

Property Value
default teradata://jdbc:teradata://teradata1.host/TMODE=ANSI,CHARSET=UTF8,DATABASE=TEST,secret=Test/RDS/Teradata1

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

A partition is represented by a single partition column of type Integer. The column contains partition names of the partitions defined on a Teradata table. For a table that does not have partition names, * is returned, which is equivalent to a single partition. A partition is equivalent to a split.

Name Type Description
partition Integer Named partition in Teradata.

Performance

Teradata supports native partitions. The Athena Teradata connector can retrieve data from these partitions in parallel. If you want to query very large datasets with uniform partition distribution, native partitioning is highly recommended. Selecting a subset of columns significantly slows down query runtime. The connector shows some throttling due to concurrency.

The Athena Teradata connector performs predicate pushdown to decrease the data scanned by the query. Simple predicates and complex expressions are pushed down to the connector to reduce the amount of data scanned and decrease query execution run time.

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 Teradata connector can combine these expressions and push them directly to Teradata for enhanced functionality and to reduce the amount of data scanned.

The following Athena Teradata 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, 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%');

Passthrough queries

The Teradata 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 Teradata, 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 Teradata. The query selects all columns in the customer table.

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

License information

By using this connector, you acknowledge the inclusion of third party components, a list of which can be found in the pom.xml file for this connector, and agree to the terms in the respective third party licenses provided in the LICENSE.txt file on GitHub.com.

Additional resources

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

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