aq - Query AWS resources with SQL

aq allows you to query your AWS resources (EC2 instances, S3 buckets, etc.) with plain SQL.

But why?

Fun, mostly fun. But see sample queries below for useful queries that can be performed with aq.

Usage

Usage:
    aq [--profile=<profile>] [--region=<region>] [--table-cache-ttl=<seconds>] [-v] [--debug]
    aq [--profile=<profile>] [--region=<region>] [--table-cache-ttl=<seconds>] [-v] [--debug] [--format=<formatter>] <query>

Sample queries:
    aq "select tags->'Name' from ec2_instances"
    aq "select count(*) from us_west_1.ec2_instances"

Options:
    --profile=<profile>  Use a specific profile from your credential file
    --region=<region>  The region to use. Overrides config/env settings
    --table-cache-ttl=<seconds>  number of seconds to cache the tables
                                 before we update them from AWS again [default: 300]
    --format=<formatter>  Choose a table, json, yaml, or csv formatter [default: table]

    -v, --verbose  enable verbose logging
    --debug  enable debug mode

Running aq without specifying any query will start a REPL to run your queries interactively.

Sample queries

One of the most important benefit of being able to query which SQL is aggregation and join, which can be very complicated or even impossible to do with AWS CLI.

To count how many running instances per instance type

> SELECT instance_type, count(*) count
  FROM ec2_instances
  WHERE state->'Name' = 'running'
  GROUP BY instance_type
  ORDER BY count DESC
+-----------------+---------+
| instance_type   |   count |
|-----------------+---------|
| m4.2xlarge      |      15 |
| m4.xlarge       |       6 |
| r3.8xlarge      |       6 |
+-----------------+---------+

Find instances with largest attached EBS volumes size

> SELECT i.id, i.tags->'Name' name, count(v.id) vols, sum(v.size) size, sum(v.iops) iops
  FROM ec2_instances i
  JOIN ec2_volumes v ON v.attachments -> 0 -> 'InstanceId' = i.id
  GROUP BY i.id
  ORDER BY size DESC
  LIMIT 3
+------------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
| id         | name      |   vols |   size |   iops |
|------------+-----------+--------+--------+--------|
| i-12345678 | foo       |      4 |   2000 |   4500 |
| i-12345679 | bar       |      2 |    332 |   1000 |
| i-12345687 | blah      |      1 |    320 |    960 |
+------------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+

Find instances that allows access to port 22 in their security groups

> SELECT i.id, i.tags->'Name' name, sg.group_name
  FROM ec2_instances i
  JOIN ec2_security_groups sg ON instr(i.security_groups, sg.id)
  WHERE instr(sg.ip_permissions, '"ToPort": 22,')
+------------+-----------+---------------------+
| id         | name      | group_name          |
|------------+-----------+---------------------|
| i-foobar78 | foobar    | launch-wizard-1     |
| i-foobar87 | blah      | launch-wizard-2     |
+------------+-----------+---------------------+

AWS Credential

aq relies on boto3 for AWS API access so all the credential configuration mechanisms of boto3 will work. If you are using the AWS CLI then you can use aq without any further configurations.

Available tables

AWS resources are specified as table names in <resource>_<collection> format with:

resource

one of the resources defined in boto3: ec2, s3, iam, etc.

collection

one of the resource's collections defined in boto3: instances, images, etc.

An optional schema (i.e. database) name can be used to specify the AWS region to query. If you don't specify the schema name then boto's default region will be used.

-- to count the number of ec2 instances in AWS Singapore region
SELECT count(*) FROM ap_southeast_1.ec2_instances

Note that the region name is specified using underscore (ap_southeast_1) instead of dash (ap-southeast-1).

At the moment the full table list for AWS us_east_1 region is

cloudformation_stacks

cloudwatch_alarms

cloudwatch_metrics

dynamodb_tables

ec2_classic_addresses

ec2_dhcp_options_sets

ec2_images

ec2_instances

ec2_internet_gateways

ec2_key_pairs

ec2_network_acls

ec2_network_interfaces

ec2_placement_groups

ec2_route_tables

ec2_security_groups

ec2_snapshots

ec2_subnets

ec2_volumes

ec2_vpc_addresses

ec2_vpc_peering_connections

ec2_vpcs

glacier_vaults

iam_groups

iam_instance_profiles

iam_policies

iam_roles

iam_saml_providers

iam_server_certificates

iam_users

iam_virtual_mfa_devices

opsworks_stacks

s3_buckets

sns_platform_applications

sns_subscriptions

sns_topics

sqs_queues

Query with structured value

Quite a number of resource contain structured value (e.g. instance tags) that cannot be use directly in SQL. We keep and present these values as JSON serialized string and add a new operator -> to make querying on them easier. The -> (replaced to json_get before execution) can be used to access an object field, object->'fieldName', or access an array item, array->index:

> SELECT '{"foo": "bar"}' -> 'foo'
+-------------------------------------+
| json_get('{"foo": "bar"}', 'foo')   |
|-------------------------------------|
| bar                                 |
+-------------------------------------+
> SELECT '["foo", "bar", "blah"]' -> 1
+--------------+
| json_get('   |
|--------------|
| bar          |
+--------------+

Install

pip install aq

Tests (with nose)

nosetests