Can Athena Views Be Created as Managed Assets in AWS DataZone?

While Athena views can be created and used within Amazon Athena, they are not directly supported as managed assets in AWS DataZone. DataZone primarily focuses on managed assets such as AWS Glue tables and Amazon Redshift tables and views.

However, you can still work with Athena views in the context of DataZone by following these steps:

1. Create your Athena views using the standard Athena interface or API.

2. In DataZone, you can create custom asset types to represent these Athena views. This allows you to catalog and manage them within the DataZone ecosystem.

3. To create a custom asset type for Athena views:

   • Navigate to the DataZone data portal
   • Select your project
   • Go to the "Data" tab
   • Choose "Asset types" from the left navigation
   • Click "Create asset type"
   • Provide a name and description for your Athena view asset type
   • Add relevant metadata forms to capture important information about the views

4. Once you've created the custom asset type, you can create assets representing your Athena views using this type.

5. Populate these assets with metadata about your Athena views, such as the view definition, underlying tables, and relevant business context.

It's important to note that while you can catalog Athena views this way, DataZone cannot automatically manage access to these views as it does for managed assets. When users subscribe to these assets, you'll need to handle access provisioning manually or through custom automation.

Best practices for managing Athena views as assets in DataZone include:

• Maintain clear and detailed metadata for each view
• Regularly update the asset information if the underlying view definition changes
• Use business glossaries and metadata forms to provide context and make the views discoverable
• Implement custom workflows or automation for managing access when these assets are subscribed to

By following these practices, you can effectively catalog and govern your Athena views within the DataZone ecosystem, even though they are not natively supported as managed assets.

Sources
Create custom asset types in Amazon DataZone - Amazon DataZone
Amazon DataZone terminology and concepts - Amazon DataZone
Governing data in relational databases using Amazon DataZone | AWS Big Data Blog

Thank you for the detailed explanation. While the approach of creating custom asset types for Athena views in AWS DataZone is insightful, the statement "When users subscribe to these assets, you'll need to handle access provisioning manually or through custom automation" introduces additional complexity that I’d prefer to avoid.

A seamless and automated solution for managing Athena views as managed assets within DataZone would be more suitable for our use case. Simplifying access management is critical to reducing overhead and ensuring efficient governance.