Athena error parsing xml, is it the in-DB tool?

Question

Hi I need a little advice on something, my users connect to Athena using in-DB. Somethings they get a syntax error in parsing the xml of the query. Then by changing some of the operators in the query, <> to != or inserting a between solves the issue. They only have this issue on some workflows, others work fine with the <> operators. The query works 100% it it is used in the Input Data tool. What is causing this xml error? I think it is because the in-DB uses a generic odbc connection for Athena where the Input Data has an Athena connector. Can someone confirm this? Thank you Carl

DataNath · Accepted Answer

Hi @Brinker, I ran into this exact issue recently when querying Snowflake via the In-DB tools. I believe the problem is caused by the query not being escaped properly in terms of special XML characters (<> etc). I got around this by escaping them myself i.e. instead of <= or >= I would use <= or >= respectively. Escape characters found here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1091945/what-characters-do-i-need-to-escape-in-xml-documents. Hope this helps!