Top 10 AWS Athena Interview Questions: Boost Your Chances of Success

Here are the top 10 AWS Athena interview questions and answers:

1. Q: What is AWS Athena? A: AWS Athena is an interactive query service that allows you to analyze data stored in Amazon S3 using standard SQL queries.

2. Q: How does AWS Athena work?
   A: Athena works by utilizing the serverless architecture. It does not require any infrastructure provisioning or data loading as it directly queries the data stored in Amazon S3.

3. Q: What is the primary use case of AWS Athena?
   A: AWS Athena is commonly used for ad hoc querying and analysis of large datasets stored in Amazon S3. It is particularly useful for data exploration and running one-off queries.

4. Q: Can AWS Athena query data in different file formats?
   A: Yes, Athena supports various file formats such as CSV, JSON, Parquet, ORC, Avro, and more. It can automatically infer the schema of the data during querying.

5. Q: How does AWS Athena handle schema changes in the data?
   A: AWS Athena is schema-on-read, which means it does not require a predefined schema. It dynamically infers the schema from the data during query execution.

6. Q: Can you integrate AWS Athena with other AWS services?
   A: Yes, Athena can be integrated with other AWS services like AWS Glue, Amazon QuickSight, AWS CloudTrail, and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for enhanced data processing and visualization capabilities.

7. Q: How does AWS Athena handle query performance?
   A: Athena uses a distributed query engine that automatically parallelizes and executes queries across multiple nodes to provide faster query performance. It also leverages query optimization techniques.

8. Q: What is the cost structure of AWS Athena?
   A: AWS Athena follows a pay-per-query pricing model. You are billed based on the amount of data scanned by your queries and the complexity of the operations performed.

9. Q: Can you schedule recurring queries in AWS Athena?
   A: Although Athena does not have built-in scheduling capabilities, you can use AWS Glue's ETL jobs or other orchestration tools to schedule recurring queries.

10. Q: How can you secure AWS Athena queries?
    A: AWS Athena integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for access control. You can define IAM policies to manage permissions and restrict access to specific tables or columns.

Remember, these answers are intended to provide a general understanding of the topics. It's always recommended to dive deeper into the AWS Athena documentation and explore practical examples to gain a more comprehensive knowledge of the service.