Query across accounts and table formats with multi-catalog in Amazon EMR
Big Data Blog
This article explains how Amazon EMR 8.1.0 solves multi-format and cross-account data querying challenges using the RedirectingSessionCatalog (RSC).
- RedirectingSessionCatalog automatically detects table formats from AWS Glue metadata and routes queries to the correct handler
- Query Iceberg, Hudi, Delta Lake, and Hive tables through a single unified catalog without format-specific prefixes
- Join tables across AWS accounts without copying data by declaring named RSC catalogs pointing to remote Glue Data Catalogs
- Enable GlueCatalogResolver for dynamic catalog discovery at query time, eliminating upfront spark.sql.catalog.* configuration
- Multi-catalog support works across all EMR deployment models: Serverless, EC2, and EKS
- Cross-account access requires Lake Formation grants, AWS Glue resource policies, S3 bucket policies, and KMS key policies
Multi-catalog support simplifies analytics workloads in data mesh architectures where domain teams own data across separate AWS accounts while analytics runs centrally.
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