Amazon Athena: Exam Guide
Amazon Athena is a serverless, interactive query service that allows you to analyze data stored in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. It is important for AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam candidates to understand Athena's capabilities and use cases.
Why Amazon Athena is important:
1. Athena enables you to query data directly from S3 without the need to load it into a separate database or data warehouse.
2. It provides a cost-effective way to analyze large datasets, as you only pay for the queries you run.
3. Athena integrates with other AWS services, such as Amazon QuickSight for data visualization and AWS Glue for data cataloging.
How Amazon Athena works:
1. Define your schema: Create a table in Athena that defines the structure of your data in S3.
2. Run SQL queries: Use standard SQL to query your data and retrieve results.
3. Pay per query: Athena charges based on the amount of data scanned by each query.
Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Amazon Athena
1. Understand Athena's serverless nature and its ability to query data directly from S3.
2. Know that Athena supports standard SQL and is suitable for ad-hoc querying and analysis.
3. Recognize scenarios where Athena is a cost-effective solution for querying large datasets.
4. Be aware of Athena's integration with other AWS services, such as Amazon QuickSight and AWS Glue.