Athena CTAS Internal Error

Question

Executing a simple CTAS query produces an internal error:  
The Query:

```
CREATE TABLE "myDatabase"."newTable" AS
SELECT *
FROM "myDatabase"."oldTable";
```

The Error:

```
[ErrorCode: INTERNAL_ERROR_QUERY_ENGINE] Amazon Athena an experienced an internal error while executing this query. Please contact AWS support for further assistance. You will not be charged for this query. We apologize for the inconvenience.
```

Syntax From AWS Documentation

```
CREATE TABLE new_table AS 
SELECT * 
FROM old_table;
```

Either this error message is incorrect/completely useless, or there has been a change made to the CTAS functionality.  
  
Edited by: Jfarrin1 on Mar 22, 2019 2:23 AM

Answer

The issue is that CTAS queries do not work with table names using special characters. So any table name using `-` produces this error.  
For information about the CTAS query syntax, please see **Considerations and Limitations for CTAS Queries** . It is stated there, quoting:  
"Table, database, or column names for CTAS queries should not contain quotes or backticks. To ensure this, check that your table, database, or column names do not represent reserved words: , and do not contain special characters (which require enclosing them in quotes or backticks). For more information, see **Names for Tables, Databases, and Columns**, in ."  
  
Edited by: JM-AWS on Mar 25, 2019 1:38 PM  
  
Edited by: JM-AWS on Mar 25, 2019 1:42 PM  
  
Edited by: JM-AWS on Mar 25, 2019 1:43 PM

Athena CTAS Internal Error

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