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The goal of the noctua package is to provide a DBI-compliant interface to Amazon’s Athena (https://aws.amazon.com/athena/) using paws SDK. This allows for an efficient, easy setup connection to Athena using the paws SDK as a driver.

NOTE: Before using noctua you must have an aws account or have access to aws account with permissions allowing you to use Athena.

Why is the package called noctua

Athena/Minerva is the Greek/Roman god of wisdom, handicraft, and warfare. One of the main symbols for Athena is the Owl. Noctua is the latin word for Owl.

Installation:

To install noctua you can get it from CRAN with:

install.packages("noctua")

Or to get the development version from Github with:

remotes::install_github("dyfanjones/noctua")

Connection Methods

Hard Coding

The most basic way to connect to AWS Athena is to hard-code your access key and secret access key. However this method is not recommended as your credentials are hard-coded.

library(DBI)

con <- dbConnect(noctua::athena(),
                aws_access_key_id='YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_ID',
                aws_secret_access_key='YOUR_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY',
                s3_staging_dir='s3://path/to/query/bucket/',
                region_name='eu-west-1')

AWS Profile Name

The next method is to use profile names set up by AWS CLI or created manually in the ~/.aws directory. To create the profile names manually please refer to: https://boto3.amazonaws.com/v1/documentation/api/latest/guide/configuration.html.

Setting up AWS CLI

noctua is compatible with AWS CLI. This allows your aws credentials to be stored and not be hard coded in your connection.

To install AWS CLI please refer to: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-chap-install.html, to configure AWS CLI please refer to: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-chap-configure.html

Once AWS CLI has been set up you will be able to connect to Athena by only putting the s3_staging_dir.

Using default profile name:

library(DBI)
con <- dbConnect(noctua::athena(),
                 s3_staging_dir = 's3://path/to/query/bucket/')

Connecting to Athena using profile name other than default.

library(DBI)
con <- dbConnect(noctua::athena(),
                 profile_name = "your_profile",
                 s3_staging_dir = 's3://path/to/query/bucket/')

Assuming ARN Role for connection

Another method in connecting to Athena is to use Amazon Resource Name (ARN) role.

Setting credentials in environmental variables:

library(noctua)
assume_role(profile_name = "YOUR_PROFILE_NAME",
            role_arn = "arn:aws:sts::123456789012:assumed-role/role_name/role_session_name",
            set_env = TRUE)

# Connect to Athena using temporary credentials
con <- dbConnect(athena(),
                s3_staging_dir = 's3://path/to/query/bucket/')

Connecting to Athena directly using ARN role:

library(DBI)
 con <- dbConnect(athena(),
                  profile_name = "YOUR_PROFILE_NAME",
                  role_arn = "arn:aws:sts::123456789012:assumed-role/role_name/role_session_name",
                  s3_staging_dir = 's3://path/to/query/bucket/')

To change the duration of ARN role session please change the parameter duration_seconds. By default duration_seconds is set to 3600 seconds (1 hour).

Usage

Basic Usage

Connect to athena, and send a query and return results back to R.

library(DBI)

# using default profile to connect
con <- dbConnect(noctua::athena(),
                 s3_staging_dir = 's3://path/to/query/bucket/')

res <- dbExecute(con, "SELECT * FROM one_row")
dbFetch(res)
dbClearResult(res)

To retrieve query in 1 step.

dbGetQuery(con, "SELECT * FROM one_row")

Intermediate Usage

To create a tables in athena, dbExecute will send the query to athena and wait until query has been executed. This makes it and idea method to create tables within athena.

query <- 
  "CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE impressions (
      requestBeginTime string,
      adId string,
      impressionId string,
      referrer string,
      userAgent string,
      userCookie string,
      ip string,
      number string,
      processId string,
      browserCookie string,
      requestEndTime string,
      timers struct<modelLookup:string, requestTime:string>,
      threadId string,
      hostname string,
      sessionId string)
  PARTITIONED BY (dt string)
  ROW FORMAT  serde 'org.apache.hive.hcatalog.data.JsonSerDe'
      with serdeproperties ( 'paths'='requestBeginTime, adId, impressionId, referrer, userAgent, userCookie, ip' )
  LOCATION 's3://elasticmapreduce/samples/hive-ads/tables/impressions/' ;"
  
dbExecute(con, query)

noctua has 2 extra function to return extra information around Athena tables: dbGetParitiions and dbShow

dbGetPartitions will return all the partitions (returns data.frame):

noctua::dbGetPartition(con, "impressions")

dbShow will return the table’s ddl, so you will able to see how the table was constructed in Athena (returns SQL character):

noctua::dbShow(con, "impressions")

Advanced Usage

library(DBI)
con <- dbConnect(noctua::athena(),
                 s3_staging_dir = 's3://path/to/query/bucket/')

Sending data to Athena

noctua has created a method to send data.frame from R to Athena.

# Check existing tables
dbListTables(con)
# Upload iris to Athena
dbWriteTable(con, "iris", iris, 
             partition=c("TIMESTAMP" = format(Sys.Date(), "%Y%m%d")))

# Read in iris from Athena
dbReadTable(con, "iris")

# Check new existing tables in Athena
dbListTables(con)

# Check if iris exists in Athena
dbExistsTable(con, "iris")

Please check out noctua method for dbWriteTable for more information in how to upload data to AWS Athena and AWS S3.

For more information around how to get the most out of AWS Athena when uploading data please check out: Top 10 Performance Tuning Tips for Amazon Athena

Tidyverse Usage

Creating a connection to Athena and query and already existing table iris that was created in previous example.

library(DBI)
library(dplyr)

con <- dbConnect(noctua::athena(),
                aws_access_key_id='YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_ID',
                aws_secret_access_key='YOUR_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY',
                s3_staging_dir='s3://path/to/query/bucket/',
                region_name='eu-west-1')
tbl(con, sql("SELECT * FROM iris"))

# Source:   SQL [?? x 5]
# Database: Athena 0.1.4 [eu-west-1/default]
   sepal_length sepal_width petal_length petal_width species
          <dbl>       <dbl>        <dbl>       <dbl> <chr>  
 1          5.1         3.5          1.4         0.2 setosa 
 2          4.9         3            1.4         0.2 setosa 
 3          4.7         3.2          1.3         0.2 setosa 
 4          4.6         3.1          1.5         0.2 setosa 
 5          5           3.6          1.4         0.2 setosa 
 6          5.4         3.9          1.7         0.4 setosa 
 7          4.6         3.4          1.4         0.3 setosa 
 8          5           3.4          1.5         0.2 setosa 
 9          4.4         2.9          1.4         0.2 setosa 
10          4.9         3.1          1.5         0.1 setosa 
# … with more rows

dplyr provides lazy querying with allows to short hand tbl(con, sql("SELECT * FROM iris")) to tbl(con, "iris"). For more information please look at https://solutions.posit.co/connections/db/r-packages/dplyr/

tbl(con, "iris")

# Source:   table<iris> [?? x 5]
# Database: Athena 0.1.4 [eu-west-1/default]
   sepal_length sepal_width petal_length petal_width species
          <dbl>       <dbl>        <dbl>       <dbl> <chr>  
 1          5.1         3.5          1.4         0.2 setosa 
 2          4.9         3            1.4         0.2 setosa 
 3          4.7         3.2          1.3         0.2 setosa 
 4          4.6         3.1          1.5         0.2 setosa 
 5          5           3.6          1.4         0.2 setosa 
 6          5.4         3.9          1.7         0.4 setosa 
 7          4.6         3.4          1.4         0.3 setosa 
 8          5           3.4          1.5         0.2 setosa 
 9          4.4         2.9          1.4         0.2 setosa 
10          4.9         3.1          1.5         0.1 setosa 
# … with more rows

Querying Athena with profile_name instead of hard coding aws_access_key_id and aws_secret_access_key. By using profile_name extra Meta Data is returned in the query to give users extra information.

con <- dbConnect(noctua::athena(),
                profile_name = "your_profile",
                s3_staging_dir='s3://path/to/query/bucket/')
tbl(con, "iris")) %>% 
  filter(petal_length < 1.3)

# Source:   lazy query [?? x 5]
# Database: Athena 0.1.4 [your_profile@eu-west-1/default]
   sepal_length sepal_width petal_length petal_width species
          <dbl>       <dbl>        <dbl>       <dbl> <chr>  
 1          4.7         3.2          1.3         0.2 setosa 
 2          4.3         3            1.1         0.1 setosa 
 3          5.8         4            1.2         0.2 setosa 
 4          5.4         3.9          1.3         0.4 setosa 
 5          4.6         3.6          1           0.2 setosa 
 6          5           3.2          1.2         0.2 setosa 
 7          5.5         3.5          1.3         0.2 setosa 
 8          4.4         3            1.3         0.2 setosa 
 9          5           3.5          1.3         0.3 setosa 
10          4.5         2.3          1.3         0.3 setosa 
# … with more rows

tbl(con, "iris") %>% 
  select(contains("sepal"), contains("petal"))

# Source:   lazy query [?? x 4]
# Database: Athena 0.1.4 [your_profile@eu-west-1/default]
   sepal_length sepal_width petal_length petal_width
          <dbl>       <dbl>        <dbl>       <dbl>
 1          5.1         3.5          1.4         0.2
 2          4.9         3            1.4         0.2
 3          4.7         3.2          1.3         0.2
 4          4.6         3.1          1.5         0.2
 5          5           3.6          1.4         0.2
 6          5.4         3.9          1.7         0.4
 7          4.6         3.4          1.4         0.3
 8          5           3.4          1.5         0.2
 9          4.4         2.9          1.4         0.2
10          4.9         3.1          1.5         0.1
# … with more rows

Upload data using dplyr function copy_to and compute.

library(DBI)
library(dplyr)

con <- dbConnect(noctua::athena(),
                profile_name = "your_profile",
                s3_staging_dir='s3://path/to/query/bucket/')

Write data.frame to Athena table

copy_to(con, mtcars,
        s3_location = "s3://mybucket/data/")

Write Athena table from tbl_sql

athena_mtcars <- tbl(con, "mtcars")
mtcars_filter <- athena_mtcars %>% filter(gear >=4)

Create athena with unique table name

mtcars_filer %>% compute()

Create athena with specified name and s3 location

mtcars_filer %>% 
  compute("mtcars_filer",
          s3_location = "s3://mybucket/mtcars_filer/")

# Disconnect from Athena
dbDisconnect(con)

Work Groups

Creating work group:

library(noctua)
library(DBI)

con <- dbConnect(noctua::athena(),
                profile_name = "your_profile",
                encryption_option = "SSE_S3",
                s3_staging_dir='s3://path/to/query/bucket/')

create_work_group(con, "demo_work_group", description = "This is a demo work group",
                  tags = tag_options(key= "demo_work_group", value = "demo_01"))

List work groups:

list_work_groups(con)

[[1]]
[[1]]$Name
[1] "demo_work_group"

[[1]]$State
[1] "ENABLED"

[[1]]$Description
[1] "This is a demo work group"

[[1]]$CreationTime
2019-09-06 18:51:28.902000+01:00


[[2]]
[[2]]$Name
[1] "primary"

[[2]]$State
[1] "ENABLED"

[[2]]$Description
[1] ""

[[2]]$CreationTime
2019-08-22 16:14:47.902000+01:00

Update work group:

update_work_group(con, "demo_work_group", description = "This is a demo work group update")

Return work group meta data:

get_work_group(con, "demo_work_group")

$Name
[1] "demo_work_group"

$State
[1] "ENABLED"

$Configuration
$Configuration$ResultConfiguration
$Configuration$ResultConfiguration$OutputLocation
[1] "s3://path/to/query/bucket/"

$Configuration$ResultConfiguration$EncryptionConfiguration
$Configuration$ResultConfiguration$EncryptionConfiguration$EncryptionOption
[1] "SSE_S3"



$Configuration$EnforceWorkGroupConfiguration
[1] FALSE

$Configuration$PublishCloudWatchMetricsEnabled
[1] FALSE

$Configuration$BytesScannedCutoffPerQuery
[1] 10000000

$Configuration$RequesterPaysEnabled
[1] FALSE


$Description
[1] "This is a demo work group update"

$CreationTime
2019-09-06 18:51:28.902000+01:00

Connect to Athena using work group:

con <- dbConnect(noctua::athena(),
                work_group = "demo_work_group")

Delete work group:

delete_work_group(con, "demo_work_group")

Similar Projects

Python:

pyAthena - A python wrapper of the python package Boto3 using the sqlAlchemy framework: https://github.com/laughingman7743/PyAthena

R:

AWR.Athena - A R wrapper of RJDBC for the AWS Athena’s JDBC drivers: https://github.com/nfultz/AWR.Athena
RAthena - A R wrapper of the python package Boto3 using DBI as the framework: https://github.com/DyfanJones/RAthena
awsathena - rJava Interface to AWS Athena SDK https://github.com/hrbrmstr/awsathena
metis - Helpers for Accessing and Querying Amazon Athena using R, Including a lightweight RJDBC shim https://github.com/hrbrmstr/metis
metisjars - JARs for metis https://github.com/hrbrmstr/metis-jars
metis.tidy - Access and Query Amazon Athena via the Tidyverse https://github.com/hrbrmstr/metis-tidy

Comparison:

noctua is basically the same as RAthena however it utilises the R AWS SDK paws to achieve the same goal.

noctua