Create Amazon Athena-Connected Nintex Workflows

Nintex Workflow Cloud is a cloud-based platform where you can design workflows to automate simple or complex processes using drag-and-drop interactions — without writing any code. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Amazon Athena data for business applications. This article shows how to create a virtual database for Amazon Athena in Connect AI and build a simple workflow from Amazon Athena data in Nintex.

CData Connect AI provides a pure, cloud-to-cloud interface for Amazon Athena, allowing you to build workflows from live Amazon Athena data in Nintex Workflow Cloud — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Nintex allows you to access data directly using SQL queries. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Amazon Athena, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Amazon Athena data.

Getting Started

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Configure Amazon Athena Connectivity for Nintex

Connectivity to Amazon Athena from Nintex is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Amazon Athena data from Nintex, we start by creating and configuring a Amazon Athena connection.

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a Connection

2. Select "Amazon Athena" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Amazon Athena.

   Authenticating to Amazon Athena

   To authorize Amazon Athena requests, provide the credentials for an administrator account or for an IAM user with custom permissions: Set to the access key Id. Set to the secret access key.

   Note: Though you can connect as the AWS account administrator, it is recommended to use IAM user credentials to access AWS services.

   Obtaining the Access Key

   To obtain the credentials for an IAM user, follow the steps below:

   1. Sign into the IAM console.
   2. In the navigation pane, select Users.
   3. To create or manage the access keys for a user, select the user and then select the Security Credentials tab.

   To obtain the credentials for your AWS root account, follow the steps below:

   1. Sign into the AWS Management console with the credentials for your root account.
   2. Select your account name or number and select My Security Credentials in the menu that is displayed.
   3. Click Continue to Security Credentials and expand the Access Keys section to manage or create root account access keys.

   Authenticating from an EC2 Instance

   If you are using the CData Data Provider for Amazon Athena 2018 from an EC2 Instance and have an IAM Role assigned to the instance, you can use the IAM Role to authenticate. To do so, set to true and leave and empty. The CData Data Provider for Amazon Athena 2018 will automatically obtain your IAM Role credentials and authenticate with them.

   Authenticating as an AWS Role

   In many situations it may be preferable to use an IAM role for authentication instead of the direct security credentials of an AWS root user. An AWS role may be used instead by specifying the . This will cause the CData Data Provider for Amazon Athena 2018 to attempt to retrieve credentials for the specified role. If you are connecting to AWS (instead of already being connected such as on an EC2 instance), you must additionally specify the and of an IAM user to assume the role for. Roles may not be used when specifying the and of an AWS root user.

   Authenticating with MFA

   For users and roles that require Multi-factor Authentication, specify the and connection properties. This will cause the CData Data Provider for Amazon Athena 2018 to submit the MFA credentials in a request to retrieve temporary authentication credentials. Note that the duration of the temporary credentials may be controlled via the (default 3600 seconds).

   Connecting to Amazon Athena

   In addition to the and properties, specify , and . Set to the region where your Amazon Athena data is hosted. Set to a folder in S3 where you would like to store the results of queries.

   If is not set in the connection, the data provider connects to the default database set in Amazon Athena.

   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Amazon Athena Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions
   

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
   
4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Amazon Athena data from Nintex Workflow Cloud.

Connect to Amazon Athena from Nintex

The steps below outline creating a new connection to Amazon Athena data from Nintex (via Connect AI).

1. Log into Nintex Workflow Cloud
2. In the Connections tab, click "Add new"
3. Select "Microsoft SQL Server" as the connector and click "Connect" 👁 Adding a new SQL Server Connection
   
4. In the SQL Server connection wizard, set the following properties:
   • Connection Name: Connect AI
   • Username: a Connect AI username (e.g. [email protected])
   • Password: the Connect AI user's PAT
   • Database Host: tds.cdata.com:14333
   • Database Name: the Amazon Athena connection (a.g., AmazonAthena1)
   👁 Configuring the Connection to Connect AI
   
5. Click "Connect"
6. Configure the connection permissions and click "Save permissions" 👁 Configuring permissions and saving the Connection
   

Create a Simple Amazon Athena Workflow

With the connection to CData Connect AI configured, we are ready to build a simple workflow to access Amazon Athena data. Start by clicking the "Create workflow" button.

Configure the Start Event Action

1. Click the start event task and select the "Form" event
2. Click "Design form"
3. Drag a "Text - Long" element onto the Form and click the element to configure it
   • Set "Title" to "Enter SQL query"
   • Set "Required" to true
4. Drag a "Text - Short" element onto the Form and click the element to configure it
   • Set "Title" to "Enter desired result column"
   • Set "Required" to true

👁 Designing the Start event Form

Configure an "Execute a Query" Action

1. Add an "Execute a query" action after the "Start event: Form" action and click to configure the action
2. Set "SQL Script" to the "Enter SQL Query" variable from the "Start event" action
3. Set "Column to retrieve" to the "Enter desired result column" variable from the "Start event" action
4. Set "Retrieved column" to a new variable (a.g., "values")

👁 Configuring the SQL Server query action

Configure a "Send an Email" Action

1. Add a "Send an email" action after the "Execute a query" action and click to configure the action
2. Set the "Recipient email address"
3. Set the "Subject"
4. Set the "Message body" to the variable created for the retrieved column

👁 Configuring the email action

Once you configure the actions, click "Save," name the Workflow, and click "Save" again. You now have a simple workflow that will query Amazon Athena using SQL and sand an email with the results.

To learn more about live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, check out the CData Connect AI page. Sign up for a free trial and reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.