Lake Formation permissions reference

To perform AWS Lake Formation operations, principals need both Lake Formation permissions and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) permissions. You typically grant IAM permissions using coarse-grained access control policies, as described in Overview of Lake Formation permissions . You can grant Lake Formation permissions by using the console, the API, or the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI).

To learn how to grant or revoke Lake Formation permissions, see Granting permissions on Data Catalog resources and Granting data location permissions.

Lake Formation permissions per resource type

Following are the valid Lake Formation permissions available for each type of resource:

Lake Formation grant and revoke AWS CLI commands

Each permission description in this section includes examples of granting the permission using an AWS CLI command. The following are the synopses of the Lake Formation grant-permissions and revoke-permissions AWS CLI commands.

grant-permissions
[--catalog-id <value>]
--principal <value>
--resource <value>
--permissions <value>
[--permissions-with-grant-option <value>]
[--cli-input-json <value>]
[--generate-cli-skeleton <value>]

revoke-permissions
[--catalog-id <value>]
--principal <value>
--resource <value>
--permissions <value>
[--permissions-with-grant-option <value>]
[--cli-input-json <value>]
[--generate-cli-skeleton <value>]

For detailed descriptions of these commands, see grant-permissions and revoke-permissions in the AWS CLI Command Reference. This section provides additional information on the --principal option.

The value of the --principal option is one of the following:

The following are syntax and examples for all --principal types.

Lake Formation permissions

This section contains the available Lake Formation permissions that you can grant to principals.

ALTER

A principal with this permission can alter metadata for a database or table in the Data Catalog. For tables, you can change the column schema and add column parameters. You cannot alter columns in the underlying data that a metadata table points to.

If the property that is being altered is a registered Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) location, the principal must have data location permissions on the new location.

aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 --permissions "ALTER" --resource '{ "Database": {"Name":"retail"}}'

aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 --permissions "ALTER" --resource '{ "Table": {"DatabaseName":"retail", "Name":"inventory"}}'

CREATE_DATABASE

A principal with this permission can create a metadata database or resource link in the Data Catalog. The principal can also create tables in the database.

aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 --permissions "CREATE_DATABASE" --resource '{ "Catalog": {}}'

When a principal creates a database in the Data Catalog, no permissions to underlying data are granted. The following additional metadata permissions are granted (along with the ability to grant these permissions to others):

When creating a database, the principal can optionally specify an Amazon S3 location. Depending on whether the principal has data location permissions, the CREATE_DATABASE permission might not be sufficient to create databases in all cases. It is important to keep the following three cases in mind.

CREATE_TABLE

A principal with this permission can create a metadata table or resource link in the Data Catalog within the specified database.

aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 
 --permissions "CREATE_TABLE" --resource '{ "Database": {"Name":"retail"}}'

When a principal creates a table in the Data Catalog, all Lake Formation permissions on the table are granted to the principal, with the ability to grant these permissions to others.

Cross-account Grants

If a database owner account grants CREATE_TABLE to a recipient account, and a user in the recipient account successfully creates a table in the owner account's database, the following rules apply:

Data Location Permissions

When you attempt to create a table that points to an Amazon S3 location, depending on whether you have data location permissions, the CREATE_TABLE permission might not be sufficient to create a table. It's important to keep the following three cases in mind.

DATA_LOCATION_ACCESS

This is the only data location permission. A principal with this permission can create a metadata database or table that points to the specified Amazon S3 location. The location must be registered. A principal who has data location permissions on a location also has location permissions on child locations.

aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 --permissions "DATA_LOCATION_ACCESS" --resource '{ "DataLocation": {"ResourceArn":"arn:aws:s3:::products/retail"}}'

DATA_LOCATION_ACCESS is not needed to query or update underlying data. This permission applies only to creating Data Catalog resources.

For more information about data location permissions, see Underlying data access control.

DELETE

A principal with this permission can delete underlying data at the Amazon S3 location specified by the table. The principal can also view the table on the Lake Formation console and retrieve information about the table with the AWS Glue API.

aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 --permissions "DELETE" --resource '{ "Table": {"DatabaseName":"retail", "Name":"inventory"}}'

This permission applies only to data in Amazon S3, and not to data in other data stores such as Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS).

DESCRIBE

A principal with this permission can view the specified database, table, or resource link. No other Data Catalog permissions are implicitly granted, and no data access permissions are implicitly granted. Databases and tables appear in the query editors of integrated services, but no queries can be made against them unless other Lake Formation permissions (for example, SELECT) are granted.

For example, a user who has DESCRIBE on a database can see the database and all database metadata (description, location, and so on). However, the user can't find out which tables the database contains, and can't drop, alter, or create tables in the database. Similarly, a user who has DESCRIBE on a table can see the table and table metadata (description, schema, location, and so on), but can't drop, alter, or run queries against the table.

The following are some additional rules for DESCRIBE:

aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 --permissions "DESCRIBE" --resource '{ "Table": {"DatabaseName":"retail", "Name":"inventory-link"}}'

DROP

A principal with this permission can drop a database, table, or resource link in the Data Catalog. You can't grant DROP on a database to an external account or organization.

aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 --permissions "DROP" --resource '{ "Database": {"Name":"retail"}}'

aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 --permissions "DROP" --resource '{ "Table": {"DatabaseName":"retail", "Name":"inventory"}}'

aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 --permissions "DROP" --resource '{ "Table": {"DatabaseName":"retail", "Name":"inventory-link"}}'

INSERT

A principal with this permission can insert, update, and read underlying data at the Amazon S3 location specified by the table. The principal can also view the table in the Lake Formation console and retrieve information about the table with the AWS Glue API.

aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 --permissions "INSERT" --resource '{ "Table": {"DatabaseName":"retail", "Name":"inventory"}}'

This permission applies only to data in Amazon S3, and not to data in other data stores such as Amazon RDS.

SELECT

A principal with this permission can view a table in the Data Catalog, and can query the underlying data in Amazon S3 at the location specified by the table. The principal can view the table in the Lake Formation console and retrieve information about the table with the AWS Glue API. If column filtering was applied when this permission was granted, the principal can view the metadata only for the included columns and can query data only from the included columns.

aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 --permissions "SELECT" --resource '{ "Table": {"DatabaseName":"retail", "Name":"inventory"}}'

This permission applies only to data in Amazon S3, and not to data in other data stores such as Amazon RDS.

You can filter (restrict the access to) specific columns with an optional inclusion list or an exclusion list. An inclusion list specifies the columns that can be accessed. An exclusion list specifies the columns that can't be accessed. In the absence of an inclusion or exclusion list, all table columns are accessible.

The results of glue:GetTable return only the columns that the caller has permission to view. Integrated services such as Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift honor column inclusion and exclusion lists.

aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 --permissions "SELECT"  --resource '{ "TableWithColumns": {"DatabaseName":"retail", "Name":"inventory", "ColumnNames": ["prodcode","location","period","withdrawals"]}}'

aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 --permissions "SELECT"  --resource '{ "TableWithColumns": {"DatabaseName":"retail", "Name":"inventory", "ColumnWildcard": {"ExcludedColumnNames": ["intkey", "prodcode"]}}}'

The following restrictions apply to the SELECT permission:

The SELECT permission always appears on the Data permissions page of the Lake Formation console as a separate row. This following image shows that SELECT is granted to the users datalake_user2 and datalake_user3 on all columns in the inventory table.

Super

This permission allows a principal to perform every supported Lake Formation operation on the database or table. You can't grant Super on a database to an external account.

This permission can coexist with the other Lake Formation permissions. For example, you can grant the Super, SELECT, and INSERT permissions on a metadata table. The principal can then perform all supported operations on the table. When you revoke Super, the SELECT and INSERT permissions remain, and the principal can perform only select and insert operations.

Instead of granting Super to an individual principal, you can grant it to the group IAMAllowedPrincipals. The IAMAllowedPrincipals group is automatically created and includes all IAM users and roles that are permitted access to your Data Catalog resources by your IAM policies. When Super is granted to IAMAllowedPrincipals for a Data Catalog resource, access to the resource is effectively controlled solely by IAM policies.

You can have the Super permission to be automatically granted to IAMAllowedPrincipals for new catalog resources by taking advantage of options on the Settings page of the Lake Formation console.

These Settings page options are enabled by default. For more information, see the following:

ASSOCIATE

A principal with this permission on a LF-Tag can assign the LF-Tag to a Data Catalog resource. Granting ASSOCIATE implicitly grants DESCRIBE.

aws lakeformation grant-permissions --principal DataLakePrincipalIdentifier=arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/datalake_user1 --permissions "ASSOCIATE" --resource '{ "LFTag": {"CatalogId":"111122223333","TagKey":"module","TagValues":["*"]}}'