Find query output files in Amazon S3 - Amazon Athena
Identify query output files
Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Find query output files in Amazon S3

Query output files are stored in sub-folders on Amazon S3 in the following path pattern unless the query occurs in a workgroup whose configuration overrides client-side settings. When workgroup configuration overrides client-side settings, the query uses the results path specified by the workgroup.

QueryResultsLocationInS3/[QueryName|Unsaved/yyyy/mm/dd/]

  • QueryResultsLocationInS3 is the query result location specified either by workgroup settings or client-side settings. For more information, see Specify a query result location later in this document.

  • The following sub-folders are created only for queries run from the console whose results path has not been overriden by workgroup configuration. Queries that run from the Amazon CLI or using the Athena API are saved directly to the QueryResultsLocationInS3.

    • QueryName is the name of the query for which the results are saved. If the query ran but wasn't saved, Unsaved is used.

    • yyyy/mm/dd is the date that the query ran.

Files associated with a CREATE TABLE AS SELECT query are stored in a tables sub-folder of the above pattern.

Identify query output files

Files are saved to the query result location in Amazon S3 based on the name of the query, the query ID, and the date that the query ran. Files for each query are named using the QueryID, which is a unique identifier that Athena assigns to each query when it runs.

The following file types are saved:

File type File naming patterns Description

Query results files

QueryID.csv

QueryID.txt

DML query results files are saved in comma-separated values (CSV) format.

DDL query results are saved as plain text files.

You can download results files from the console from the Results pane when using the console or from the query History. For more information, see Download query results files using the Athena console.

Query metadata files

QueryID.csv.metadata

QueryID.txt.metadata

DML and DDL query metadata files are saved in binary format and are not human readable. The file extension corresponds to the related query results file. Athena uses the metadata when reading query results using the GetQueryResults action. Although these files can be deleted, we do not recommend it because important information about the query is lost.

Data manifest files

QueryID-manifest.csv

Data manifest files are generated to track files that Athena creates in Amazon S3 data source locations when an INSERT INTO query runs. If a query fails, the manifest also tracks files that the query intended to write. The manifest is useful for identifying orphaned files resulting from a failed query.

To use the Amazon CLI to identify the query output location and result files, run the aws athena get-query-execution command, as in the following example. Replace abc1234d-5efg-67hi-jklm-89n0op12qr34 with the query ID.

aws athena get-query-execution --query-execution-id abc1234d-5efg-67hi-jklm-89n0op12qr34

The command returns output similar to the following. For descriptions of each output parameter, see get-query-execution in the Amazon CLI Command Reference.

{
    "QueryExecution": {
        "Status": {
            "SubmissionDateTime": 1565649050.175,
            "State": "SUCCEEDED",
            "CompletionDateTime": 1565649056.6229999
        },
        "Statistics": {
            "DataScannedInBytes": 5944497,
            "DataManifestLocation": "s3://amzn-s3-demo-bucket/athena-query-results-123456789012-us-west-1/MyInsertQuery/2019/08/12/abc1234d-5efg-67hi-jklm-89n0op12qr34-manifest.csv",
            "EngineExecutionTimeInMillis": 5209
        },
        "ResultConfiguration": {
            "EncryptionConfiguration": {
                "EncryptionOption": "SSE_S3"
            },
            "OutputLocation": "s3://amzn-s3-demo-bucket/athena-query-results-123456789012-us-west-1/MyInsertQuery/2019/08/12/abc1234d-5efg-67hi-jklm-89n0op12qr34"
        },
        "QueryExecutionId": "abc1234d-5efg-67hi-jklm-89n0op12qr34",
        "QueryExecutionContext": {},
        "Query": "INSERT INTO mydb.elb_log_backup SELECT * FROM mydb.elb_logs LIMIT 100",
        "StatementType": "DML",
        "WorkGroup": "primary"
    }
}