What is Amazon Athena used for?

Amazon Athena is a serverless interactive query service that facilitates querying data directly in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. It allows users to analyze and retrieve data without the need for complex extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) processes. By simply having data stored in S3, users can run SQL queries, which makes it incredibly versatile for data analysis and reporting.

The service helps in various data analytics tasks, such as running ad-hoc queries, processing large datasets, or integrating with various business intelligence tools. With its pay-per-query pricing model, Athena is cost-effective for businesses that require flexible and dynamic query capabilities without the need to manage infrastructure.

While Athena aids in analyzing data that could be part of a larger data lake architecture, its primary function is focused specifically on querying the data stored in S3 using SQL. Other options such as building data lakes, data archiving, or streaming data processing describe different functionalities not at the core of what Amazon Athena offers as a service.