Learn Amazon Athena with online courses and programs
What is Athena?
Across industries, machine learning algorithms, power search, and user experiences for everything from dating apps to online shopping. Amazon Athena plays its part by helping developers access large data sets using simple language.
So, what is Amazon Athena exactly? A staple for many modern developers, Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that allows users to directly access data stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) using standard SQL (structured query language).Footnote 1 With SQL, users can access and manipulate data across relational systems.
Not only is Amazon Athena a powerful analytics tool, it’s also easy to set up and use. Amazon Athena offers:Footnote 2
Flexibility, with support for different languages
Use of open-data formats and open-source frameworks
Integrations for business intelligence and machine-learning tools
It’s also serverless, which means users don’t have to set up and manage servers or data warehouses or extract, transform, and load data (ETL); querying is simple and straightforward.Footnote 3
These are just some of the reasons why Amazon Athena appeals to so many developers, and why it’s an asset to anyone looking to become a web development or data science professional.
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AWS Athena training curriculum
Before you can learn how to use Amazon Athena, you’ll need solid programming knowledge. You may begin your education in AWS Athena by learning fundamental programming concepts and the syntax used in SQL, the language which allows you to perform an Athena query.
An AWS Athena training course can cover topics like:
What is AWS Athena, and what is Amazon Athena used for?
Why is a query service useful to web developers and data scientists?
How can you use standard SQL to access data stored in Amazon S3 with Amazon Athena?
What are the Amazon Athena data types, and what are they used for?
How do you create and query tables in Amazon Athena?
How does Amazon Athena compare to other query services like Redshift or Glue?
edX offers a wide variety of courses for beginners and experts alike. Earn a degree in a bachelor’s degree or even a master’s degree program. Or focus on adding a new set of skills to your existing repertoire with tailored boot camps. Wherever you are in your learning journey, you can find an option that’s right for you.
Jobs that use Athena software
Many software development, data science, and computer science professionals use Amazon Athena. For example:
Web developers may use Amazon Athena to pull data stored in Amazon S3 to inform their algorithms.
Data scientists or analysts may use Amazon Athena to access the data used to inform their models, and may also use Athena’s analytics capabilities to enhance their work.
Computer scientists may use Amazon Athena to collect data for machine learning models.
Any job that works with AWS Athena will also draw extensively from computer science and data analytics concepts.
How to use Amazon Athena for data analysis
Athena makes it easy to analyze data stored in Amazon S3, whether that data exists in documents, image, video, or log form. As a data analyst, you might find yourself adding Athena to your professional tool box and using it throughout your career to uncover critical business insights.
But Athena isn’t something you can start using without prior technical experience. In order to become a data analyst who uses Athena, you’ll need to have a solid understanding of statistics and data analytics. Coding experience will also serve you well, since Athena queries are served using SQL, a common query language, and you’ll likely have to use Athena alongside other programs.
If you are looking to expand your knowledge in either of these fields, edX offers coding boot camps, as well as data analytics boot camps. For others, the path to using Athena, AWS Glue, and other data analysis tools begins with obtaining a degree in data science. The educational and skills requirements for roles in this field can vary, so research the positions that you hope to apply for before deciding which educational path best suits you.