Can't rollback to Athena Version 2.

Question

We used to have all our workgroups in the Athena Version 2, some of them were automatically upgraded to the version 3. Now, some of our analysis queries is breaking due the timestamp (3) -> timestamp(6) error (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/athena/latest/ug/engine-versions-reference-0003.html#engine-versions-reference-0003-timestamp-changes). We tried to downgrade back to the version 2 but is is not available on the Workgroup Configuration menu.

Is Athena Version 2 deprecated?

Answer

Athena version 2 is now deprecated. When Amazon Athena was initially launched, it used engine version 2. However, over time Amazon has made improvements and added new features to Athena that are only available in the newer engine version 3.

Some key differences between the two versions include:

* Version 3 supports newer file formats like ORC, Parquet and Apache Iceberg tables that version 2 did not support.
* The SQL syntax for time travel operations using SYSTEM_TIME and SYSTEM_VERSION clauses has changed to use TIMESTAMP AS OF and VERSION AS OF in version 3. This is causing the errors you mentioned in some of your existing queries.
* Version 3 includes performance improvements and scalability enhancements that make it more suitable for production use compared to the older version 2.
* While you can no longer downgrade a workgroup back to version 2, there are a few options to resolve the timestamp errors:
* Update the affected queries to use the new TIMESTAMP AS OF and VERSION AS OF syntax.

Can't rollback to Athena Version 2.

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