Amazon Web Services has introduced a new solution for gaining deeper insights into how applications and teams are interacting with the AWS Glue Data Catalog. Through new usage metrics delivered via Amazon CloudWatch, administrators can now monitor API calls, such as how often metadata is being retrieved or written, over time and across workloads.

The feature is available at no additional cost within AWS Glue (no aggregator or add‑on required) and supports all Catalog operations via API or console across all Glue-supported regions.

What Metrics Are Now Available

AWS Glue now emits CloudWatch metrics for Data Catalog activity grouped by API operation type and overall usage. The primary categories include:

• GetCatalog, GetDatabase, GetTable, GetPartition, SearchTables, Get*Statistics, and UpdateTable
  
  
• Each metric is broken down into hourly counts of successful API calls
• Two dimensions enable granular visibility:
  • API Name (e.g., “GetTable”)
  • Catalog Version via the CatalogId dimension

These metrics provide a clearer understanding of usage patterns, API distribution, and consumption across versions and services accessing the Catalog.

Why This Matters

Prior to this, teams lacked visibility into how clients interacted with the Data Catalog or which APIs were most heavily used. Actions that would previously go unnoticed, like crawling metadata using Athena, running table scanning jobs, or Hive metastore access, can now be quantified. Use cases include:

• Detecting anomalies like unexpected spikes in GetTable calls
• Identifying workloads that frequently update metadata
• Pinpointing hotspots in API usage
• Allocating usage costs and responsibilities accurately

These metrics allow service owners to make data-driven decisions about workload optimization, cost monitoring, and operational efficiency.

How to Get Started

Using the new metrics is straightforward:

1. IAM Permissions: Ensure roles or users have permission to read Glue metrics and publish metric alarms in CloudWatch.
   
   
2. Using Console Metrics: In CloudWatch, select the namespace “AWS/Glue”, filter by metric name (e.g., GetTable), and choose dimensions like API and CatalogId.
   
   
3. Visualization & Alarms: Plot data over time in graphs, create dashboards, or set alarms on thresholds (e.g., an unusually high rate of UpdateTable calls appears).
   
   
4. Cross-Service Tagging: API requests made through Athena, Lake Formation, EMR, Redshift Spectrum, and Hive can now be collectively monitored for how they reference the same Catalog.

This feature is available now across all AWS Glue regions.

Final Thoughts

The addition of usage metrics for AWS Glue Data Catalog API calls helps teams:

• Monitor usage and identify anomalies
• Analyze workload distribution by API
• Implement cost‑center reporting by domain/client
• Drive adoption of best practices for data catalog hygiene

This deeper observability equips enterprises to operate more efficiently, securely, and transparently in their data management environment.