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AWS Glue Data Catalog

This page describes how to create and maintain connections to your AWS Glue Data Catalog.

Glue Catalog connections serve as a metadata store connection type needed to create Upsolver-managed tables in Upsolver. When a table is created in Upsolver using a Glue Catalog connection, its underlying files are stored in Amazon S3 and a pointer to the table is created in your Glue Catalog.

Glue Catalog connections also double as Athena connections in Upsolver, so if your goal is to write your transformed data into an Athena table, you should first ensure you have a Glue Catalog connection with the correct credentials to write to your intended location.

Note that an AWS Glue Data Catalog connection is created by default when you deploy Upsolver on your AWS account.

See Deploy Upsolver on AWS for more information.

Create a Glue Catalog connection

Simple example

A Glue Catalog connection can be created as follows:

CREATE GLUE_CATALOG CONNECTION my_glue_catalog_connection
    DEFAULT_STORAGE_CONNECTION = my_s3_storage_connection
    DEFAULT_STORAGE_LOCATION = 's3://sqlake/my_glue_catalog_table_files/';

Note that the connection in this example is created based on the default credentials derived from Upsolver's integration with your AWS account.

Additionally, you need an Amazon S3 connection with write permissions in order to create any Glue Catalog connection.

Full example

The following example also creates a Glue Catalog connection but additionally configures credentials by providing a specific role:

CREATE GLUE_CATALOG CONNECTION my_glue_catalog_connection
    AWS_ROLE = 'arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/upsolver-sqlake-role'
    DEFAULT_STORAGE_CONNECTION = my_s3_storage_connection
    DEFAULT_STORAGE_LOCATION = 's3://sqlake/my_glue_catalog_table_files/'
    REGION = 'us-east-1'
    DATABASE_DISPLAY_FILTERS = ('demo_db', 'prod_db')
    COMMENT = 'glue catalog connection example';

To establish a connection with specific permissions, you can configure the AWS_ROLE and EXTERNAL_ID options like in the example above or you can configure the AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY options to provide the credentials to work with your Glue Catalog.

Additionally, the REGION option can be used to provide the region of your Glue Catalog.

You can also limit the list of databases displayed within your catalog by providing the list of database names using DATABASE_DISPLAY_FILTER[S].

Finally using the COMMENT option, you can add a description for your connection.

Alter a Glue Catalog connection

Some connection options are considered mutable, so in some cases, you can run a SQL command to alter an existing Glue Catalog connection rather than create a new one.

For example, take the Glue Catalog connection we created previously, based on default credentials:

CREATE GLUE_CATALOG CONNECTION my_glue_catalog_connection
    DEFAULT_STORAGE_CONNECTION = my_s3_storage_connection
    DEFAULT_STORAGE_LOCATION = 's3://sqlake/my_glue_catalog_table_files/';

To change the connection's permissions and keep everything else the same without creating a new connection, you can run the following command:

ALTER GLUE_CATALOG CONNECTION my_glue_catalog_connection
    SET AWS_ROLE = 'arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/new-sqlake-role';

Note that some options such as REGION cannot be altered once the connection has been created.

Drop a Glue Catalog connection

If you no longer need a connection, you can easily drop it with the following SQL command:

DROP CONNECTION my_glue_catalog_connection;

However, be aware that the connection cannot be deleted if existing tables or jobs depend upon the connection.

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