More importantly, with Federated Query, you can perform complex transformations on data stored in external sources before loading it into Redshift. Redshift uses Federated Query to run the same queries on historical data and live data. You can run your queries directly in Athena. If you want to analyze data stored in any of those databases, you don't need to load into S3 for analysis. Athena can connect to Redis, Elasticsearch, HBase, DynamoDB, DocumentDB, and CloudWatch. Athena IntegrationsĪthena has prebuilt connectors that let you load data from sources other than Amazon S3. However, you can only analyze data in the same AWS region. Thus, if you want extra-fast results for a query, you can allocate more computational resources to it when running Redshift Spectrum.Īdditionally, several Redshift clusters can access the same data lake simultaneously. When using Spectrum, you have control over resource allocation, since the size of resources depends on your Redshift cluster. Thus, performance can be slow during peak hours. You do not have control over resource provisioning. In the case of Athena, the Amazon Cloud automatically allocates resources for your query. With Redshift Spectrum, on the other hand, you need to configure external tables for each external schema.Ī key difference between Redshift Spectrum and Athena is resource provisioning. However, in the case of Athena, it uses Glue Data Catalog's metadata directly to create virtual tables.
They use virtual tables to analyze data in Amazon S3. Athena: Which One to Choose?įunctionality and Performance Comparison for Redshift Spectrum vs Athenaīoth the services use Glue Data Catalog for managing external schemas. Functionality and Performance Comparison for Redshift Spectrum vs.There is no need to manage any infrastructure. Much like Redshift Spectrum, Athena is serverless. It makes it possible, for instance, to join data in external tables with data stored in Amazon Redshift to run complex queries.įor more information on Integrate.io's native Redshift connector, visit our Integration page.Īmazon Athena, on the other hand, is a standalone query engine that uses SQL to directly query data stored in Amazon S3.
The service allows data analysts to run queries on data stored in S3. Redshift Spectrum is an extension of Amazon Redshift.
Let's take a closer look at the differences between Amazon Redshift Spectrum and Amazon Athena. However, the two differ in their functionality. You don't need to maintain any infrastructure, which makes them incredibly cost-effective.