Architectural considerations

When working with raw datasets that have large amounts of data, performance can be slower than desired as some basic queries can take 30 seconds or longer. A simple tactic for speeding up performance is to simply create an Athena table from the query results. You can limit your query to a bounding box of latitude and longitude values to refine the results further:

CREATE TABLE "skilifts-wasatch" AS
SELECT * FROM skilifts_vw
WHERE lat between 40 and 41
    AND lon between -112 and -111

This will capture a snapshot of the data from the view within the specified bounding box for fast querying. Any table that is created using this method should be managed and refreshed at the appropriate intervals. Using this approach can result in stale tables if not organized effectively. Despite the cautions, using this technique to search for a specific ski lift speeds up the query from around 20 seconds to well under a second.

One...