Run federated queries against relational databases, data warehouses, object stores, and non-relational data stores. Federated SQL queries allow you to query the data in-place from wherever it resides. You can use familiar SQL to JOIN data across multiple data sources for quick analysis, and store results in Amazon S3 for subsequent use. Athena federated query also introduces a new Query Federation SDK that allows you to write your own data source connectors to query custom data stores.

Write custom scalar functions and invoke them in your SQL queries. You can write your UDFs using the Athena Query Federation SDK. UDFs can be used in both SELECT and FILTER clauses of a SQL query. You can invoke multiple UDFs in the same query. While Athena provides built-in functions, UDFs enables you to perform custom processing such as compressing and decompressing data, redacting sensitive data, or applying customized decryption.

Invoke machine learning models for inference directly from your SQL queries. Customers can use more than a dozen built-in machine learning algorithms provided by Amazon SageMaker, train their own models, or find and subscribe to model packages from the AWS Marketplace and deploy on Amazon SageMaker Hosting Services. There is no additional setup required. The ability to use machine learning models in SQL queries makes complex tasks such anomaly detection, customer cohort analysis, and sales predictions as simple as invoking a function in a SQL query.