Glue Data Connector

The Glue Data Connector enables federated SQL querying on tables in an AWS Glue Data Catalog.

datasets:
  - from: glue:tpch.lineitem
    name: lineitem
    params:
      glue_region: us-east-1
      glue_key: ${env:SPICE_AWS_KEY} # Optional.
      glue_secret: ${env:SPICE_AWS_SECRET} # Optional.

Configuration

from

Specify a table using the format, glue:<database>.<table> by replacing <database> with the name of the Glue database and <table>with the name of the table inside of the <database>.

name

The dataset name. This will be used as the table name within Spice.

Example:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM lineitem;

+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
| 6001215  |
+----------+

The dataset name cannot be a reserved keyword.

params

The following parameters are supported for configuring the connection to the Glue Data Catalog:

The following parameters control how the embedded S3 reader fetches Parquet/ORC/CSV data files referenced by Glue table metadata. They are inherited from the S3 data connector. glue_endpoint and glue_url_style also apply to Iceberg-format tables, whose object I/O is handled by the Iceberg client. The other parameters do not apply to Iceberg-format tables.

Examples

Basic Glue Table

datasets:
  - from: glue:tpch.lineitem
    name: lineitem
    params:
      glue_region: us-east-1
      glue_key: ${env:AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID}
      glue_secret: ${env:AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}

Amazon S3 Tables

Connect to tables in Amazon S3 Tables using the glue_catalog_id parameter with the S3 Tables catalog format:

datasets:
  - from: glue:my_namespace.orders
    name: orders
    params:
      glue_catalog_id: 123635965758:s3tablescatalog/my-table-bucket
      glue_region: us-east-2
      glue_key: ${env:AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID}
      glue_secret: ${env:AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}

Authentication

If AWS credentials are not explicitly provided in the configuration, the connector will automatically load credentials from the following sources in order. These credentials will be used to connect to the S3 bucket as well as the Glue catalog.

1. Environment Variables:

   • AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
   • AWS_SESSION_TOKEN (if using temporary credentials)

2. Shared AWS Config/Credentials Files:

   • Config file: ~/.aws/config (Linux/Mac) or %UserProfile%\.aws\config (Windows)

   • Credentials file: ~/.aws/credentials (Linux/Mac) or %UserProfile%\.aws\credentials (Windows)

   • The AWS_PROFILE environment variable can be used to specify a named profile, otherwise the [default] profile is used.

   • Supports both static credentials and SSO sessions

   • Example credentials file:

     # Static credentials
     [default]
     aws_access_key_id = YOUR_ACCESS_KEY
     aws_secret_access_key = YOUR_SECRET_KEY
     
     # SSO profile
     [profile sso-profile]
     sso_start_url = https://my-sso-portal.awsapps.com/start
     sso_region = us-west-2
     sso_account_id = 123456789012
     sso_role_name = MyRole
     region = us-west-2

3. AWS STS Web Identity Token Credentials:

   • Used primarily with OpenID Connect (OIDC) and OAuth
   • Common in Kubernetes environments using IAM roles for service accounts (IRSA)

4. ECS Container Credentials:

   • Used when running in Amazon ECS containers
   • Automatically uses the task's IAM role
   • Retrieved from the ECS credential provider endpoint
   • Relies on the environment variable AWS_CONTAINER_CREDENTIALS_RELATIVE_URI or AWS_CONTAINER_CREDENTIALS_FULL_URI which are automatically injected by ECS.

5. AWS EC2 Instance Metadata Service (IMDSv2):

   • Used when running on EC2 instances.
   • Automatically uses the instance's IAM role.
   • Retrieved securely using IMDSv2.

The connector will try each source in order until valid credentials are found. If no valid credentials are found, an authentication error will be returned.

Required IAM Permissions

The IAM role or user needs the following permissions to access Iceberg tables in S3/Glue:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
      {
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Action": ["s3:ListBucket"],
        "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::company-bucketname-datasets"
      },
      {
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Action": ["s3:GetObject", "s3:PutObject"],
        "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::company-bucketname-datasets/*"
      },
      {
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Action": [
          "glue:GetCatalog",
          "glue:GetDatabases",
          "glue:GetDatabase",
          "glue:GetTable",
          "glue:GetTables",
          "glue:UpdateTable"
        ],
        "Resource": "*"
      }
    ]
}

Permission Details

ORC Data Files

Spice reads Glue tables whose InputFormat is ORC (org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.orc.OrcInputFormat), with Hive partitioning enabled. Hive and Spark often write ORC data files without an extension, such as 000000_0, so Spice reads extensionless objects as well as .orc objects. It skips zero-byte objects, such as S3 folder markers, job-marker files such as _SUCCESS, _committed_*, and .crc files, and objects under a _temporary staging path.

Write Support

This connector supports writing data to Glue-managed Iceberg tables using SQL INSERT INTO statements. Writes are currently append-only: inserted data is added as new data files and registered through a new Iceberg table snapshot. Schema validation ensures inserted data matches the target table schema.

To enable writes, set access: read_write on the dataset:

datasets:
  - from: glue:tpch.lineitem
    name: lineitem
    access: read_write
    params:
      glue_region: us-east-1

-- Insert with values
INSERT INTO lineitem (l_orderkey, l_partkey, l_quantity)
VALUES (1, 100, 5.0);

-- Insert from another table
INSERT INTO lineitem
SELECT * FROM staging_lineitem;

Inserting into partitioned Iceberg tables is supported. UPDATE and DELETE operations are not currently supported.

Write operations require s3:PutObject permission on the target S3 bucket and glue:UpdateTable permission to commit the new table snapshot to the Glue Data Catalog, in addition to the read permissions listed above. For more details, see Data Ingestion.

Limitations

Cookbook

• A cookbook recipe to configure Glue as a data connector in Spice. Glue Data Connector