Official vendor OpenAPI document · agent-readyAnalyticsBusiness IntelligenceapiKey60 EndpointsREST
For Agents
Use the Amazon Athena API to run SQL queries on data in Amazon S3 on AWS, with 60 operations covering the full control-plane lifecycle.
Use for: Run a SQL query on data in my S3 bucket, I want to fetch results from a completed query execution, Create a workgroup for the analytics team, Save a named query for the daily revenue report
Not supported: Does not handle data ingestion, ETL, or warehouse cluster management - use for serverless SQL querying on existing data lakes only.
Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that runs standard SQL against data stored in Amazon S3 without provisioning infrastructure. It supports federated queries to other data sources, parameterised prepared statements, named saved queries, and managed workgroups for cost and access control.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the Amazon Athena to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Amazon Athena, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
1
Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Famazonaws.com%2Faws-athena" | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Famazonaws.com%2Faws-athena" | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
Capabilities
What an agent can do with Amazon Athena API.
Submit SQL queries against S3 data using the Glue Data Catalog or a federated data source
Track query execution status, scanned bytes, and cost per query
Create workgroups that enforce per-team result locations and cost controls
Save reusable named queries and parameterised prepared statements
Run Spark notebooks against the data catalog from inside Athena
List historical query executions for auditing and re-run
Use Cases
Patterns agents use Amazon Athena API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Ad-hoc analytics on an S3 data lake
Run interactive SQL against terabytes of Parquet, JSON, or CSV data sitting in Amazon S3 without provisioning a warehouse. Athena reads table metadata from the Glue Data Catalog, executes the query in a serverless engine, and writes results to a configured S3 location. Teams can be productive within an hour once the catalog is in place.
Submit the query 'SELECT region, SUM(amount) FROM sales WHERE year = 2026 GROUP BY region' through Athena's primary workgroup and return the query execution id.
Per-team query isolation with workgroups
Separate analyst, finance, and engineering query traffic by creating distinct workgroups, each with its own result S3 location, scanned-bytes limit, and CloudWatch metrics. Workgroup configuration enforces guardrails such as encryption requirements and per-query cost ceilings without relying on policy checks at the IAM layer alone. Setup takes minutes per workgroup.
Create a workgroup named 'analytics-prod' with a per-query data-scanned limit of 1 TB and a result S3 location of s3://athena-results/analytics-prod/.
Parameterised report generation
Define prepared statements for routine report queries - for example a tenant-scoped revenue report - so applications can execute the same template with different bound parameters without re-sending the SQL text. Combined with named queries, this gives analysts a small, governed library of canonical queries.
Create a prepared statement named 'tenant_revenue' under workgroup 'analytics-prod' with the SQL 'SELECT month, SUM(amount) FROM sales WHERE tenant_id = ? GROUP BY month'.
AI agent answering analytics questions through Jentic
A data agent can answer business questions on demand by searching for the Athena query intent through Jentic, loading the StartQueryExecution and GetQueryResults schemas, and executing them with scoped credentials. The agent reasons over the returned rows without ever holding raw AWS access keys. Multi-step query and result handling becomes a single agent intent.
Search Jentic for 'run a SQL query against data in S3', load StartQueryExecution and GetQueryResults schemas, and execute a query that returns last week's revenue by region.
Key Endpoints
60 endpoints — amazon athena is an interactive query service that runs standard sql against data stored in amazon s3 without provisioning infrastructure.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AmazonAthena.StartQueryExecution
Start a SQL query execution
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AmazonAthena.GetQueryResults
Retrieve results for a completed query
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AmazonAthena.GetQueryExecution
Describe a query execution and its status
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AmazonAthena.CreateWorkGroup
Create a workgroup with cost and access controls
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AmazonAthena.CreateNamedQuery
Save a named query
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AmazonAthena.CreatePreparedStatement
Create a parameterised prepared statement
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AmazonAthena.StartQueryExecution
Start a SQL query execution
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AmazonAthena.GetQueryResults
Retrieve results for a completed query
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AmazonAthena.GetQueryExecution
Describe a query execution and its status
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AmazonAthena.CreateWorkGroup
Create a workgroup with cost and access controls
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AmazonAthena.CreateNamedQuery
Save a named query
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AmazonAthena.CreatePreparedStatement
Create a parameterised prepared statement
Jentic AI Readiness Score
This API is usable in Jentic One now. Its AI-readiness score against Jentic's framework shows where it stands today and where improvements would make it even easier for agents to use.
A
Amazon Athena
- Foundational (C+)60/100
99
Foundational Compliance63
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility36
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience92
Agent Usability50
Security100
AI DiscoverabilityPowered by JenticScoring Framework 1.0.0 | Scoring Engine 0.4.0
Show dimension breakdown
99
Foundational Compliance
Base layer of spec validity and structural soundness.
Grade: A+Signals: 4
95%
Lint Results
Aggregated quality score from linter diagnostics, weighted by severity.
100%
Resolution Completeness
Percentage of `$ref` references that resolve successfully.
100%
Specification Validity
Checks whether the API description parses successfully and conforms to its declared specification (e.g., OpenAPI).
100%
Structural Integrity
Structural correctness score based on schema issues using logarithmic dampening.
63
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility
Clarity, completeness, and ingestion readiness for developers and tooling.
Grade: B-Signals: 4
0%
Example Density
How richly the API is illustrated with examples.
100%
Example Validity
Percentage of examples that conform to their schemas.
50%
Response Coverage
Percentage of operations with complete response definitions (success, client error, server error).
100%
Tooling Readiness
Health of API ingestion, bundling, and resolution within Jentic pipelines.
36
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience
Semantic breadth, depth, and agent comprehension for AI systems.
Grade: FSignals: 4
44%
Description Coverage
Coverage of descriptions across API elements.
0%
Error Standardization
Coverage of RFC 9457 Problem Details for error responses.
100%
OperationId Quality
Coverage, uniqueness, and casing consistency of operationIds for AI inference.
0%
Summary Coverage
Coverage of summaries across operations/tags/info.
92
Agent Usability
Functional utility, complexity comfort, and AI orchestration readiness.
Grade: A+Signals: 1
92%
Complexity Comfort
Agent comfort level based on API operational and structural complexity.
50
Security
Trust, risk posture, and security compliance.
Grade: C-Signals: 1
50%
Authentication Strength
Average quality of security schemes based on authentication method strength (weakest link for OAuth2).
100
AI Discoverability
Findability, semantic richness, and reasoning readiness.
Grade: A+Signals: 1
100%
Descriptive Richness
Clarity and depth of descriptions across API elements.
Score it yourself
Every API in the directory is allowlisted, so you can re-score it with no key required.
npx @jentic/api-scorecard-cli score <openapi-url>Why Jentic?
What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.
Setup
Wiring Amazon Athena by hand means creating IAM credentials, choosing the right regional host from athena.{region}.amazonaws.com, signing every request with AWS SigV4, and passing the X-Amz-Target action header on each call yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import Amazon Athena from the API Directory, store the AWS access key once, and your agent calls it.
Permission scoping
Amazon Athena carries the query and workgroup targets in the request body rather than the URL path, so limit the agent to the operations it needs, such as StartQueryExecution, GetQueryResults, or GetQueryExecution. You choose the operations it may call, so destructive ones like deleting a workgroup or a named query are not included unless you add them.
Credential isolation
Your AWS access key for Amazon Athena is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and signed with SigV4 at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'run a SQL query against data in S3' or 'retrieve results for a completed query', and Jentic returns the matching Amazon Athena operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the AWS service reference.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
FAQs
Specific to using Amazon Athena API through Jentic.
What authentication does the Amazon Athena API use?
The Amazon Athena API uses AWS Signature Version 4 (HMAC) request signing with IAM-issued credentials, the same scheme as every AWS service API. Jentic's your Jentic One instance stores those AWS credentials encrypted in the vault, generates short-lived signed requests at execution time, and never passes raw access keys into the agent's context.
Can I run a sql query on data in my s3 bucket with the Amazon Athena API?
Yes - the Amazon Athena API exposes 60 operations including the actions needed for that scenario. Use the operations listed in the key endpoints section as the starting point, then chain calls as needed for your workflow.
What are the rate limits for the Amazon Athena API?
AWS applies per-account, per-region request rate limits to the Amazon Athena control plane. Specific limits are not encoded in the OpenAPI spec; consult the AWS service quotas console for the Amazon Athena entry, and design retries with exponential backoff to absorb throttling responses.
How do I run a SQL query against data in S3 through Jentic?
Run pip install jentic, then call client.search('run a SQL query against data in S3') to discover the Amazon Athena operations that match. Load the schema for the chosen operation with client.load(...) and execute it with client.execute(...). Jentic handles AWS request signing automatically against the credentials stored in your Jentic One instance.
Is the Amazon Athena API free to call?
AWS does not charge for control-plane API calls themselves on most Amazon Athena operations, but the underlying resources you create or operate (fleets, queries, deployments, and so on) incur usage charges according to the Amazon Athena pricing page. Refer to the AWS pricing page for the service to estimate cost.
Which operations should an agent call first when working with the Amazon Athena API?
For most workflows, agents should start by listing existing resources to understand the current state, then call the create or update operation that matches the intent. The endpoints listed under Key Endpoints in the catalog give a ranked starting set.
Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the Amazon Athena API?
Yes. Because you host your own Jentic One instance, you decide which Amazon Athena operations the agent can call, so you can allow only what a task needs, such as StartQueryExecution, GetQueryResults, and GetQueryExecution. Athena carries the query and workgroup targets in the request body rather than the URL path, so scoping happens at the operation level you define. Destructive actions like deleting a workgroup or a named query stay out of reach unless you explicitly add them, and the AWS credentials that sign each request are held by your instance rather than exposed to the agent.
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