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I have some Athena databases which contain a number of tables, and I know some of these tables use the Iceberg format. It’s important to me to know which are Iceberg tables, because those will allow a greater range of INSERT, UPDATE, and ALTER queries that the basic EXTERNAL table type.

When we create Iceberg tables in Athena we set the table_type property like this:

CREATE TABLE my_table
-- specify columns, partition, location, etc
TBLPROPERTIES ('table_type' ='ICEBERG')

How can I check the value of this property from Athena when working with tables? If that’s not possible, what’s a suitable proxy for this so that I can determine whether a table is an Iceberg table (vs an External table)?

2

Answers


  1. In Athena DESCRIBE FORMATTED [TABLE] (docs) is the only way to do it — neither SHOW CREATE TABLE nor SHOW TBLPROPERTIES work as of today.

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  2. Can you python with boto3 library and pull table info. https://boto3.amazonaws.com/v1/documentation/api/latest/reference/services/glue/client/get_table.html

    Have used this option as there’s metadata you can only get through the console or through api such as when a column is created etc.

    Just another option to get additional info without going to the console

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