Amazon Athena vs Amazon Quicksight: What are the differences?

Amazon Athena and Amazon QuickSight are two powerful cloud-based services offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that cater to specific needs in data analytics and visualization. Both services have their unique features and functionalities, making them suitable for different use cases. Below are the key differences between Amazon Athena and Amazon QuickSight.

1. Data Processing Methodology: Amazon Athena is a serverless interactive query service that allows users to directly query data stored in Amazon S3 using standard SQL syntax. It does not require any infrastructure setup or management, as it operates on a pay-per-query model. On the other hand, Amazon QuickSight is a fast, cloud-powered business intelligence (BI) service that focuses on data visualization and reporting. It allows users to connect various data sources, create interactive dashboards, and share those dashboards with others.

2. Usability and User Interface: Amazon Athena primarily targets data analysts, data engineers, and developers who are comfortable with writing SQL queries. It provides an SQL interface via the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), or any JDBC/ODBC connection. Amazon QuickSight, on the other hand, is designed for business users and non-technical users who need to quickly create visualizations and reports. It offers a drag-and-drop interface with various built-in visualization options.

3. Data Source Integration: Amazon Athena directly integrates with data stored in Amazon S3. It supports various file formats, including Parquet, CSV, JSON, and more. Users can create external tables to map the data stored in S3 for querying purposes. In contrast, Amazon QuickSight can connect to different data sources such as Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, Amazon RDS, and other third-party databases. It provides options to import data or set up a live connection to these sources.

4. Data Transformation and Preprocessing: Amazon Athena is primarily focused on querying and extracting data without performing extensive data transformations or preprocessing. It can extract data from files, but users need to apply transformations outside of Athena before ingesting the data. Amazon QuickSight, on the other hand, offers various data transformation capabilities such as data cleansing, filtering, joining, and aggregating within the tool itself. It allows users to perform these transformations for creating meaningful visualizations and reports.

5. Collaboration and Sharing: Amazon Athena does not have built-in collaboration features or sharing capabilities. It is primarily a query service for individual users or teams who have access to the same account. In contrast, Amazon QuickSight provides collaboration features, allowing users to invite others to view or edit dashboards. It also offers options to share dashboards publicly or embed them in other applications.

6. Pricing Model: Amazon Athena pricing is solely based on the amount of data scanned by the queries and the amount of data stored in Amazon S3. Users only pay for the queries they run and the storage they utilize. Amazon QuickSight, on the other hand, follows a subscription-based pricing model. It offers different pricing tiers based on the number of users and the level of functionality required.

In summary, Amazon Athena is a serverless query service designed for querying and analyzing data stored in Amazon S3 using SQL. It is suitable for data analysts and engineers who are comfortable with SQL syntax. On the other hand, Amazon QuickSight is a cloud-powered BI service focused on data visualization and reporting. It is geared towards business users and provides a user-friendly interface for creating interactive dashboards and sharing them with others.