AWS Athena Connections

[sabihaS]

Hello Team,

I am trying to connect to AWS Athena. I have tested Athena ODBC connection and its successful. However, When I try to connect to Athena from Alteryx I get this error 

"Error: Input Data (1): Error SQLPrepare: [Simba][Athena] (1040) An error has been thrown from the AWS Athena client. Athena Error No: 15, HTTP Response Code: 400, Exception Name: AccessDeniedException, Error Message: You are not authorized to perform: athena:StartQueryExecution on the resource. After your AWS administrator or you have updated your permissions, please try again. [Execution ID: ]"

I have checked with AWS admin and they confirmed that the role which I am using already had StartQueryExecution permission. Also, I noticed that in 'Visual Query Builder' I can see all the Databases and there tables\views but when I click any table\view its empty (no metadata).

Please can someone advise.

Thank you.

[Deano478]

@sabihaS has your AWS admin set up a custom work group in which the Athena queries will run?

[sabihaS]

@Deano478 Yes, they did and I am using that same workgroup in ODBC connection as well.

[apathetichell]

My hunch here is that your admin is wrong --- or that Alteryx requires some additional permissions which may not be related to performing the query -> but are related to seeing certain objects.

A few things:

1) can you confirm you have access to the S3?

2) can you run the query via CLI -> https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/athena/start-query-execution.html (ask your admin/AWS team for the CLI to run) - if you auth locally?

3) if 1 and 2 are true---> check out the list here --> https://docs.aws.amazon.com/service-authorization/latest/reference/list_amazonathena.html -- Alteryx may require a Get/List permission not in your IAM policy.

[Deano478 · Accepted solution]

@sabihaS to my knowledge from using Athena in Alteryx before it worked when I assigned it StartQueryExecution, GetQueryExecution, GetQueryResults permissions also does your Athena DB have files in s3 that is reads from?

[sabihaS]

@apathetichell Thank you. Yes, I have access to S3 and for point 2 and 3 I will check tomorrow as AWS admin left for the day and will confirm the outcome. 

[sabihaS]

@Deano478 Thank you. I will check with AWS admin about other 2 permissions and will post the outcome. Yes Athena DBs do have files in S3 from where they are loaded.

[Deano478]

ahh okay if you are using s3 you may also need to include ListBucket and GetObject permissions for S3

[sabihaS]

@Deano478 Thank you. Adding permissions GetQueryExecution, GetQueryResult do the trick. Its working now.