---

title: 'Glue Catalog Connector' sidebar_label: 'Glue' description: 'Connect to an AWS Glue Data Catalog.' sidebar_position: 5 pagination_prev: null pagination_next: null tags:

• catalogs
• glue
• data-connectors
• write

---

Connect to an AWS Glue Data Catalog as a catalog provider for federated SQL query.

Configuration

from

The from field is used to specify the catalog provider. For Glue, use either glue (which targets the default Glue catalog for the AWS account and region) or glue:<catalog_id> to target a specific Glue catalog.

The catalog id appears after the first : in the from value. For Amazon S3 Tables, use the format glue:<account_id>:s3tablescatalog/<table_bucket_name>. The catalog id is otherwise the AWS account id when overriding the default catalog explicitly.

Examples:

name

The name field is used to specify the name of the catalog in Spice. Tables from the AWS Glue Data Catalog will be available in the schema with this name in Spice. The schema hierarchy of the external catalog is preserved in Spice.

include

Use the include field to specify which tables to include from the catalog. The include field supports glob patterns to match multiple tables. For example, *.my_table_name would include all tables with the name my_table_name in the catalog from any schema. Multiple include patterns are OR'ed together and can be specified to include multiple tables.

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_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
glue_iam_role_source	Optional. IAM role credential source. auto (default) uses the default AWS credential chain, metadata uses only instance/container metadata (IMDS, ECS, EKS/IRSA), env uses only environment variables.

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

Parameter Name	Definition
glue_endpoint	Optional. Custom S3-compatible endpoint URL used when reading Parquet/CSV data files (e.g. https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com, http://minio.local:9000). Leave unset for AWS S3.
glue_url_style	Optional. S3 URL addressing style for Parquet/CSV data files. One of vhost or path. Auto-detected from the endpoint when unset.
glue_versioning	Optional. Enables S3 object versioning support for Parquet/CSV data files when set to enabled. Defaults to enabled.
client_timeout	Optional. Timeout for the underlying S3 client used to fetch Parquet/CSV data files. E.g. 30s.
allow_http	Optional. Set to true to allow insecure HTTP for the S3 endpoint used to read Parquet/CSV data files. Defaults to false. Required when glue_endpoint uses an scheme.

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
s3:PutObject	Required for write operations. Allows writing 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.

Write Support

This catalog 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 for all tables in the catalog, set access: read_write on the catalog:

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 in addition to the read permissions listed above. For more details, see Data Ingestion.

Limitations

:::warning

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

:::

Cookbook

There is a cookbook recipe to configure an AWS Glue Data Connector in Spice.