Query Apache Iceberg tables

Iceberg version support – Athena supports Apache Iceberg version 1.4.2.

Tables with Amazon Glue catalog only – Only Iceberg tables created against the Amazon Glue catalog based on specifications defined by the open source glue catalog implementation are supported from Athena.

Table locking support by Amazon Glue only – Unlike the open source Glue catalog implementation, which supports plug-in custom locking, Athena supports Amazon Glue optimistic locking only. Using Athena to modify an Iceberg table with any other lock implementation will cause potential data loss and break transactions.

Supported file formats – Iceberg file format support in Athena depends on the Athena engine version, as shown in the following table.

Iceberg Restricted Metadata – Lake Formation does not evaluate the Iceberg metadata tables. Hence, the Iceberg metadata tables are restricted if there are any Lake Formation row or cell filters present on the base table or if you do not have permissions to view all columns in the base table. For such cases, when you query the $partitions, $files, $manifests, and $snapshots Iceberg metadata tables, it fails and you get an AccessDeniedException error. Additionally, the metadata column $path has the same Lake Formation restrictions and fails when selected by the query. All other metadata tables can be queried regardless of the Lake Formation filters. For more information, see Metadata tables.

Iceberg v2 tables – Athena only creates and operates on Iceberg v2 tables. For the difference between v1 and v2 tables, see Format version changes in the Apache Iceberg documentation.

Display of time types without time zone – The time and timestamp without time zone types are displayed in UTC. If the time zone is unspecified in a filter expression on a time column, UTC is used.

Timestamp related data precision – Although Iceberg supports microsecond precision for the timestamp data type, Athena supports only millisecond precision for timestamps in both reads and writes. For data in time related columns that is rewritten during manual compaction operations, Athena retains only millisecond precision.

Unsupported operations – The following Athena operations are not supported for Iceberg tables.

Views – Use CREATE VIEW to create Athena views as described in Work with views. If you are interested in using the Iceberg view specification to create views, contact athena-feedback@amazon.com.

TTF management commands not supported in Amazon Lake Formation – Although you can use Lake Formation to manage read access permissions for TransactionTable Formats (TTFs) like Apache Iceberg, Apache Hudi, and Linux Foundation Delta Lake, you cannot use Lake Formation to manage permissions for operations like VACUUM, MERGE, UPDATE or OPTIMIZE with these table formats. For more information about Lake Formation integration with Athena, see Using Amazon Lake Formation with Amazon Athena in the Amazon Lake Formation Developer Guide.

Partitioning by nested fields – Partitioning by nested fields is not supported. Attempting to do so produces the message NOT_SUPPORTED: Partitioning by nested field is unsupported: column_name.nested_field_name.

Skipping S3 Glacier objects not supported – If objects in the Apache Iceberg table are in an Amazon S3 Glacier storage class, setting the read_restored_glacier_objects table property to false has no effect.

For example, suppose you issue the following command:

ALTER TABLE table_name SET TBLPROPERTIES ('read_restored_glacier_objects' = 'false')

For Iceberg and Delta Lake tables, the command produces the error Unsupported table property key: read_restored_glacier_objects. For Hudi tables, the ALTER TABLE command does not produce an error, but Amazon S3 Glacier objects are still not skipped. Running SELECT queries after the ALTER TABLE command continues to return all objects.