Setting up and configuring Athena

Amazon Athena provides a flexible way to access all of your geospatial data in AWS. Publicly available data sources such as Open Data in AWS provide continually updated information from authoritative sources around the globe. Using custom connectors, you are also able to access compliant databases even if they are not in AWS. Athena is a useful query tool because it can easily access geospatial data in S3, RDS, Redshift, Timestream, OpenSearch, and numerous other sources and formats.

Don’t get discouraged if you find it difficult to discern the difference between AWS Glue and Amazon Athena. Both of these services work hand in hand to provide a powerful, consumption-priced analytics platform. The features of Glue depend on Athena and vice versa, so it can be difficult to know whether the objects you are using are configured in Glue or Athena. A good rule of thumb is to think of Athena as the place where you create SQL views, and Glue as the...