Set up, administrative, and programmatic access
If you've already signed up for Amazon Web Services, you can start using Amazon Athena immediately. If you haven't signed up for AWS or need assistance getting started, be sure to complete the following tasks.
Sign up for an AWS account
To get started with AWS, you need an AWS account. For information about creating an AWS account, see Getting started with an AWS account in the AWS Account Management Reference Guide.
Grant programmatic access
Users need programmatic access if they want to interact with AWS outside of the AWS Management Console. The way to grant programmatic access depends on the type of user that's accessing AWS.
To grant users programmatic access, choose one of the following options.
| Which user needs programmatic access? | To | By |
|---|---|---|
| IAM | (Recommended) Use console credentials as temporary credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs. |
Following the instructions for the interface that you want to use.
|
|
Workforce identity (Users managed in IAM Identity Center) |
Use temporary credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs. |
Following the instructions for the interface that you want to use.
|
| IAM | Use temporary credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs. | Following the instructions in Using temporary credentials with AWS resources in the IAM User Guide. |
| IAM | (Not recommended) Use long-term credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs. |
Following the instructions for the interface that you want to use.
|
Attach managed policies for Athena
Athena managed policies grant permissions to use Athena features. You can attach these managed policies to one or more IAM roles that users can assume in order to use Athena.
An IAM role is an IAM identity that you can create in your account that has specific permissions. An IAM role is similar to an IAM user in that it is an AWS identity with permissions policies that determine what the identity can and cannot do in AWS. However, instead of being uniquely associated with one person, a role is intended to be assumable by anyone who needs it. Also, a role does not have standard long-term credentials such as a password or access keys associated with it. Instead, when you assume a role, it provides you with temporary security credentials for your role session.
For more information about roles, see IAM roles and Creating IAM roles in the IAM User Guide.
To create a role that grants access to Athena, you attach Athena managed policies to the
role. There are two managed policies for Athena: AmazonAthenaFullAccess and
AWSQuicksightAthenaAccess. These policies grant permissions to Athena to
query Amazon S3 and to write the results of your queries to a separate bucket on your behalf.
To see the contents of these policies for Athena, see AWS managed policies for Amazon Athena.
For steps to attach the Athena managed policies to a role, follow Adding IAM identity permissions (console) in the
IAM User Guide and add the
AmazonAthenaFullAccess and AWSQuicksightAthenaAccess
managed policies to the role that you created.
Note
You may need additional permissions to access the underlying dataset in Amazon S3. If you are not the account owner or otherwise have restricted access to a bucket, contact the bucket owner to grant access using a resource-based bucket policy, or contact your account administrator to grant access using a role-based policy. For more information, see Control access to Amazon S3 from Athena. If the dataset or Athena query results are encrypted, you may need additional permissions. For more information, see Encryption at rest.
