AWS Feedback: Athena

Based on your screenshots and questions, I can see you're experiencing frustration with Amazon Athena. Let me address both issues:

1. "Why let me select something if it's not there?"

The "table not found" error you're seeing can occur for several reasons:

• The table might have been deleted but is still appearing in the UI due to caching or synchronization issues between Athena and AWS Glue
• The table might exist in a different schema than what's being referenced in your query
• There could be a permissions issue preventing access to the table

This is a known issue where Athena's UI might show tables that are no longer available or are in an inconsistent state. In some cases, data catalogs can appear in the Athena UI even after deletion, sometimes showing a DELETE_COMPLETED status but still appearing in dropdown menus.

2. "How do I debug null data if I cannot see the data?"

For troubleshooting NULL data in Athena, especially with JSON data:

• You can set ignore.malformed.json to true when using the OpenX SerDe, which will return malformed records as NULL instead of failing
• This helps identify which records are causing issues
• For partitioned data, ensure your partition definitions match the actual partition structure in your S3 bucket
• Check for data type mismatches between your table schema and the actual data
• Verify that the partition projection settings are correct, especially date ranges (for example, if you have year partitions set to 2022-2024 but your data is from 2025, it won't be found)

If you're still having trouble, you might need to check your AWS Glue schema definitions, verify S3 file paths, and ensure proper permissions are in place.
Sources
Troubleshoot issues in Athena - Amazon Athena
Amazon Athena returns no records for Amazon Connect CTR data on S3 | AWS re:Post
Table not found when using Athena with Amazon QuickSight - Amazon QuickSight
Unable to Delete Data Catalog in Amazon Athena | AWS re:Post