Overview Quickstart dbt Compatibility The Style Guide profiles.yml sources.yml Configuration Supported Databases

AMAZON ATHENA

AWS serverless query service for analyzing data in S3 using standard SQL. Pay-per-query with no infrastructure to manage.

DVT SUPPORT

✓ FEDERATION SOURCE

read in federation models

✓ FEDERATION TARGET

materialize federation results

✓ DEFAULT TARGET

run full dbt projects against it

✓ SEED TARGET

dvt seed --target loads here

DVT supports Amazon Athenabecause both dbt and Sling do: dbt drives standard materializations when it's your default target, Sling moves data in and out during federation. Connectivity for both layers is checked with dvt debug --all.

PREREQUISITES

Driver: pyathena — installed automatically by:

dvt sync

CONFIGURATION FIELDS

FIELD	TYPE	REQUIRED	DEFAULT	DESCRIPTION
type	string	yes	—	Must be `athena`
region_name	string	yes	us-east-1	AWS region
database	string	yes	—	Athena database (Glue catalog)
s3_staging_dir	string	yes	—	S3 path for query results (e.g., s3://my-bucket/athena-results/)
aws_access_key_id	string	no	—	AWS access key (or use IAM role)
aws_secret_access_key	string	no	—	AWS secret key (or use IAM role)
threads	integer	no	4	Number of parallel threads

PROFILES.YML EXAMPLE

my_project:
  target: athena_dev
  outputs:
    athena_dev:
      type: athena
      region_name: us-east-1
      database: analytics
      s3_staging_dir: s3://my-bucket/athena-results/
      aws_access_key_id: "{{ env_var('AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID') }}"
      aws_secret_access_key: "{{ env_var('AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY') }}"

SOURCES.YML EXAMPLE

sources:
  - name: data_lake
    meta:
      connection: athena_dev
    database: raw_data
    tables:
      - name: clickstream
      - name: server_logs

DBT ADAPTER FEATURES

When Amazon Athena is your default target, every standard dbt model runs through the official dbt adapter — all of its documented capabilities apply unchanged:

MATERIALIZATIONS

INCREMENTAL STRATEGIES

NOTABLE CONFIGS

▸table_type: iceberg | hive
▸partitioned_by
▸S3 data location required

Official dbt Amazon Athena adapter docs ↗

FEDERATION INCREMENTAL STRATEGIES

Strategies available when this engine is the target of a f_incremental model:

✓ Append✓ Delete+Insert✓ Merge

KNOWN LIMITATIONS

⚠Serverless — query latency includes startup time
⚠Results staged to S3 before retrieval