What is the difference between MySQL and Athena

Question

I came across Amazon Athena and found it quite interesting. Athena really has lot of features and is fast but I was confused as how it is different than MySQL? Can someone help me with this?

Answer 1

Amazon Athena is an interactive data analysis tool used to process complex queries in relatively less time. It is server-less hence, there is no hassle of setting up and doesn’t require managing the infrastructure. It is not a Database service hence, you just pay for the queries you run. You just point your data in S3, define the schema required and with a standard SQL you are good to go.

MySQL is an Oracle-backed open source relational database management system (RDBMS) based on Structured Query Language (SQL). MySQL runs on virtually all platforms, including Linux, UNIX and Windows. Although it can be used in a wide range of applications, MySQL is most often associated with web applications and online publishing.

To find a detailed explanation on MySQL and Athena you can go through the blog "What is Amazon Athena?"

Answer 2

Athena does not have all the DDL commands as of now. Athena is just an analytics tool by Amazon and is used to process the query very quickly. It processes the complex query into simpler ones and then joins the result to give a faster output.

The simplest way for creating a table in Athena can be storing the CSV, JSON or your file in S3 and then point it to Athena and create a external table. Then you can perform all the different query on it.

Here is a blog on how to create a table in Athena. "What is Amazon Athena?"

Hope this helps!