Amazon Athena is a serverless, interactive analytics service built on open-source frameworks, supporting open-table and file formats. Athena provides a simplified, flexible way to analyze petabytes of data where it lives. You can analyze data or build applications from an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) data lake and over 25 data sources, including on-premises data sources or other cloud systems using SQL or Python. Athena is built on open-source Trino and Presto engines and Apache Spark frameworks, with no provisioning or configuration effort required.
Different types of users rely on Athena, including business analysts, data scientists, security, and operations engineers. Athena provides a query editor to enter and run queries on data using structured query language (SQL). The query editor provides features like run, cancel, and save queries or statements. Additionally, it provides keyboard shortcuts for user-friendly operation.
This post discusses the keyboard shortcuts available and how you can use them.
Accessing the Athena console
If you’re new to Athena and don’t know how to access the Athena console and run queries and statements, refer to the following getting started tutorial. This tutorial walks you through using Athena to query data. You’ll create a table based on sample data stored in Amazon S3, query the table, and check the results of the query.
Keyboard shortcuts
The query editor provides keyboard shortcuts for different action types like running a query, formatting a query, line operations, selection, multi-cursor, go to, find/replace, and folding. Compared to reaching for the mouse or navigating a menu, a single keyboard shortcut saves a moment of your time.
With keyboard shortcuts, you can use key combinations to edit your SQL statement without using a mouse. For example, you can use multiple cursors in your editing window for selecting all instances of text you wish to edit, and edit your text, fold or unfold selected text, find and replace text, and perform line operations like remove line, move lines, and more.
You can also find these keyboard shortcuts on the query editor on the bottom right corner, as highlighted in the following screenshot.
The following table shows the keyboards shortcuts for Window/Linux and Mac.
| Action Type | Action | Windows/Linux | Mac |
| Other | Execute query | Ctrl-Enter | Cmd-Enter, Ctrl-Enter |
| Other | Format query | Ctrl-Alt-L | Opt-Cmd-L |
| Other | Previous query | Ctrl-Up | Ctrl-Shift-Up |
| Other | Next query | Ctrl-Down | Ctrl-Shift-Down |
| Other | Close tab | Alt-X | Opt-X |
| Other | Previous tab | Ctrl-, | Ctrl-, |
| Other | Next tab | Ctrl-. | Ctrl-. |
| Other | Indent | Tab | Tab |
| Other | Outdent | Shift-Tab | Shift-Tab |
| Other | Save | Ctrl-S | Cmd-S |
| Other | Undo | Ctrl-Z | Cmd-Z |
| Other | Redo | Ctrl-Shift-Z, Ctrl-Y | Cmd-Shift-Z, Cmd-Y |
| Other | Toggle comment | Ctrl-/ | Cmd-/ |
| Other | Transpose letters | Ctrl-T | Ctrl-T |
| Other | Change to lower case | Ctrl-Shift-U | Ctrl-Shift-U |
| Other | Change to upper case | Ctrl-U | Ctrl-U |
| Other | Overwrite | Insert | Insert |
| Other | Delete | Delete | – |
| Line Operations | Remove line | Ctrl-D | Cmd-D |
| Line Operations | Copy lines down | Alt-Shift-Down | Cmd-Opt-Down |
| Line Operations | Copy lines up | Alt-Shift-Up | Cmd-Opt-Up |
| Line Operations | Move lines down | Alt-Down | Opt-Down |
| Line Operations | Move lines up | Alt-Up | Opt-Up |
| Line Operations | Remove to line end | Alt-Delete | Ctrl-K |
| Line Operations | Remove to line start | Alt-Backspace | Cmd-Backspace |
| Line Operations | Remove word left | Ctrl-Backspace | Opt-Backspace, Ctrl-Opt-Backspace |
| Line Operations | Remove word right | Ctrl-Delete | Opt-Delete |
| Line Operations | Split line | – | Ctrl-O |
| Selection | Select all | Ctrl-A | Cmd-A |
| Selection | Select left | Shift-Left | Shift-Left |
| Selection | Select right | Shift-Right | Shift-Right |
| Selection | Select word left | Ctrl-Shift-Left | Opt-Shift-Left |
| Selection | Select word right | Ctrl-Shift-Right | Opt-Shift-Right |
| Selection | Select line start | Shift-Home | Shift-Home |
| Selection | Select line end | Shift-End | Shift-End |
| Selection | Select to line end | Alt-Shift-Right | Cmd-Shift-Right |
| Selection | Select to line start | Alt-Shift-Left | Cmd-Shift-Left |
| Selection | Select up | Shift-Up | Shift-Up |
| Selection | Select down | Shift-Down | Shift-Down |
| Selection | Select page up | Shift-PageUp | Shift-PageUp |
| Selection | Select page down | Shift-PageDown | Shift-PageDown |
| Selection | Select to start | Ctrl-Shift-Home | Cmd-Shift-Up |
| Selection | Select to end | Ctrl-Shift-End | Cmd-Shift-Down |
| Selection | Duplicate selection | Ctrl-Shift-D | Cmd-Shift-D |
| Selection | Select to matching bracket | Ctrl-Shift-P | – |
| Multicursor | Add multi-cursor above | Ctrl-Alt-Up | Ctrl-Opt-Up |
| Multicursor | Add multi-cursor below | Ctrl-Alt-Down | Ctrl-Opt-Down |
| Multicursor | Add next occurrence to multi-selection | Ctrl-Alt-Right | Ctrl-Opt-Right |
| Multicursor | Add previous occurrence to multi-selection | Ctrl-Alt-Left | Ctrl-Opt-Left |
| Multicursor | Move multi-cursor from current line to the line above | Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Up | Ctrl-Opt-Shift-Up |
| Multicursor | Move multi-cursor from current line to the line below | Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Down | Ctrl-Opt-Shift-Down |
| Multicursor | Remove current occurrence from multi-selection and move to next | Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Right | Ctrl-Opt-Shift-Right |
| Multicursor | Remove current occurrence from multi-selection and move to previous | Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Left | Ctrl-Opt-Shift-Left |
| Multicursor | Select all from multi-selection | Ctrl-Shift-L | Ctrl-Shift-L |
| Go to | Go to left | Left | Left, Ctrl-B |
| Go to | Go to right | Right | Right, Ctrl-F |
| Go to | Go to word left | Ctrl-Left | Opt-Left |
| Go to | Go to word right | Ctrl-Right | Opt-Right |
| Go to | Go line up | Up | Up, Ctrl-P |
| Go to | Go line down | Down | Down, Ctrl-N |
| Go to | Go to line start | Alt-Left, Home | Cmd-Left, Home, Ctrl-A |
| Go to | Go to line end | Alt-Right, End | Cmd-Right, End, Ctrl-E |
| Go to | Go to page up | PageUp | Opt-PageUp |
| Go to | Go to page down | PageDown | Opt-PageDown, Ctrl-V |
| Go to | Go to start | Ctrl-Home | Cmd-Home, Cmd-Up |
| Go to | Go to end | Ctrl-End | Cmd-End, Cmd-Down |
| Go to | Scroll line down | Ctrl-Down | Cmd-Down |
| Go to | Scroll line up | Ctrl-Up | – |
| Go to | Go to matching bracket | Ctrl-P | – |
| Go to | Scroll page down | – | Opt-PageDown |
| Go to | Scroll page up | – | Opt-PageUp |
| Find/Replace | Find | Ctrl-F | Cmd-F |
| Find/Replace | Replace | Ctrl-H | Cmd-Opt-F |
| Find/Replace | Find next | Ctrl-K | Cmd-G |
| Find/Replace | Find previous | Ctrl-Shift-K | Cmd-Shift-G |
| Folding | Fold selection | Alt-L, Ctrl-F1 | Cmd-Opt-L, Cmd-F1 |
| Folding | Unfold | Alt-Shift-L, Ctrl-Shift-F1 | Cmd-Opt-Shift-L, Cmd-Shift-F1 |
| Folding | Unfold all | Alt-Shift-0 | Cmd-Opt-Shift-0 |
| Other | Autocomplete | Ctrl-Space | Ctrl-Space |
| Other | Focus out | Esc | Esc |
For illustration, you can perform the Format query action by using the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl-Alt-L for Windows/Linux, Opt-Cmd-L for Mac). It converts unformatted SQL to a well-formatted SQL, as shown in the following screenshots.
Similarly, you can try out the Toggle comment command (Ctrl-/ for Windows/Linux, Cmd-/ for Mac) to comment or uncomment lines of SQL in the Athena query editor. This comes in very handy when you want to quickly comment out specific lines in your query, as shown in the following screenshots.
You can do line operations like Remove line, Copy lines down, Copy lines up, and more. The following screenshots show an example of the Remove line action (Ctrl-D for Windows/Linux, Cmd-D for Mac).
You can do a line selection like Select all, Select left, Select line start, and more. The following screenshots show an example the Select all action (Ctrl-A for Windows/Linux, Cmd-A for Mac).
You can do multi-cursor actions like Add multi-cursor above, Add multi-cursor below, Add next occurrence to multi-selection, Add previous occurrence to multi-selection, Move multi-cursor from current line to the line above, and more. The following example is of the Add multi-cursor above action (Ctrl-Alt-Up for Windows/Linux, Ctrl-Opt-Up for Mac).
You can do go to actions like Go to left, Go to right, Go to word left, and more. The following is an example of the Go to left action (Ctrl-B).
You can do find and replace actions like Find, Replace, Find next, and more. The following is an example of the Replace action (Ctrl-H for Windows/Linux, Cmd-Opt-F for Mac).
You can also do folding actions like Fold selection, Unfold, and Unfold all. The following example is of the Unfold action (Alt-Shift-L or Ctrl-Shift-F1 for Windows/Linux, Cmd-Opt-Shift-L or Cmd-Shift-F1 for Mac).
Conclusion
In this post, we saw how Athena provides an array of native options to help you improve productivity when analyzing your data. You can go to the Athena console and start running SQL statements or querying data using the built-in query editor. The query editor provides key shortcuts to improve your productivity by using key combinations to edit SQL statements, instead of using a mouse.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment.
About the Authors
Naresh Gautam is a Data Analytics and AI/ML leader at AWS with 20 years of experience, who enjoys helping customers architect highly available, high-performance, and cost-effective data analytics and AI/ML solutions to empower customers with data-driven decision-making. In his free time, he enjoys meditation and cooking.
Srikanth Sopirala is a Principal Analytics Specialist Solutions Architect at AWS. He is a seasoned leader with over 20 years of experience, who is passionate about helping customers build scalable data and analytics solutions to gain timely insights and make critical business decisions. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, spending time with his family, and road biking.
Harsh Vardhan is an AWS Solutions Architect, specializing in analytics. He has over 5 years of experience working in the field of big data and data science. He is passionate about helping customers adopt best practices and discover insights from their data.
