---

title: 'Glue Data Connector' sidebar_label: 'Glue Data Connector' description: 'Glue Data Connector Documentation' tags:

• data-connectors
• glue
• write

---

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

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:

The dataset name cannot be a reserved keyword.

params

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

Parameter Name	Definition
glue_region	The AWS region for the Glue Data Catalog. E.g. us-west-2.
glue_catalog_id	The Glue catalog ID. For Amazon S3 Tables, use the format <account_id>:s3tablescatalog/<table_bucket_name>. If not provided, the default catalog for the account is used.
glue_key	Access key (e.g. AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID for AWS). If not provided, credentials will be loaded from environment variables or IAM roles.
glue_secret	Secret key (e.g. AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY for AWS). If not provided, credentials will be loaded from environment variables or IAM roles.
glue_session_token	Session token (e.g. AWS_SESSION_TOKEN for AWS) for temporary credentials

Examples

Basic Glue Table

Amazon S3 Tables

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

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:

   :::tip To set up SSO authentication:

   1. Run aws configure sso to configure a new SSO profile
   2. Use the profile by setting AWS_PROFILE=sso-profile
   3. Run aws sso login --profile sso-profile to start a new SSO session :::

3. AWS STS Web Identity Token Credentials:

   • Used primarily with OpenID Connect (OIDC) and OAuth

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.

:::note[IAM Permissions] Regardless of the credential source, the IAM role or user must have appropriate S3/Glue permissions (e.g., s3:ListBucket, glue:GetTable) to access the tables. If the Spicepod connects to multiple different AWS services, the permissions should cover all of them. :::

Required IAM Permissions

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

Permission Details

Permission	Purpose
s3:ListBucket	Required. Allows scanning all objects from the bucket
s3:GetObject	Required. Allows fetching objects
glue:GetCatalog	Required. Retrieve metadata about the specified catalog.
glue:GetDatabases	Required. List the databases available in the current catalog.
glue:GetDatabase	Required. Retrieve metadata about the specified database.
glue:GetTable	Required. Retrieve metadata about the specified table.
glue:GetTables	Required. List the tables available in the current database.

Limitations

:::warning[Data Source/Data Format Restrictions]

This catalog connector is limited to tables that use the S3 data source. Kinesis and Kafka data sources are not currently supported. Additionally, this catalog connector is currently limited to Iceberg tables, tables with parquet or CSV data format only.

:::

:::warning[Performance Considerations]

When using the Glue Data connector without acceleration, data is loaded into memory during query execution. Ensure sufficient memory is available, including overhead for queries and the runtime, especially with concurrent queries.

Memory limitations can be mitigated by storing acceleration data on disk, which is supported by duckdb and sqlite accelerators by specifying mode: file.

Each query retrieves data from the S3 source, which might result in significant network requests and bandwidth consumption. This can affect network performance and incur costs related to data transfer from S3.

:::

Cookbook

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