Classmethod Data Analytics Newsletter (AWS Data Analytics Edition) – November 2026 Issue
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I'm Ishikawa from the Consulting Department, Cloud Business Division. Here are the AWS data analytics updates for October 2026. This month, Amazon Redshift added support for creating and refreshing Apache Iceberg materialized views, Amazon Quick upgraded Quick Sight Reader users to Quick Essentials at no additional cost, and the next generation of Amazon OpenSearch Serverless now supports time series collections. AWS Glue Data Catalog also added support for Iceberg V3 table optimization and OAuth authentication for the Iceberg REST Catalog API, and there were more operations-related updates as well, such as Amazon MSK Connect letting you pause, resume, and update connector settings without recreating the connector. There are other updates too, so let me introduce them!
Amazon Quick
New Features and Updates
2026/10/09 - Amazon Quick now supports brand templates for on-brand presentations and documents
Amazon Quick now lets you upload brand templates and create presentations and documents that follow your approved visual identity. When a brand administrator uploads a PowerPoint or Word template, or imports one from a connected file store such as SharePoint, Quick extracts the colors, fonts, logos, layouts, and brand rules from the file. The brand administrator reviews and edits the extracted content, then publishes it to the entire organization.
Quick follows the template rules when creating new materials, and if a request violates the rules, it explains why and offers an on-brand alternative. Administrators control which users can create and publish templates through custom permissions. It is generally available in the Amazon Quick desktop app.
2026/10/28 - Quick now supports smart approvals for agentic actions
Amazon Quick now supports smart approvals for agent actions. If approval is requested every time an agent performs an action such as sending an email, updating a record, or creating a ticket, approval fatigue sets in and confirmations become a formality over time. With smart approvals, a separate review model called a classifier evaluates the target action against the user's request, automatically approves routine actions, and routes high-impact actions to the user for confirmation.
Only actions whose user setting is to confirm every time (ask) are covered, existing policies always take precedence, and no new access permissions are granted. Sending content outside the organization, changing permissions, deleting content, making payments, and similar actions are routed to the user for confirmation. It is enabled by default for all users, and each review is recorded in AWS CloudTrail.
2026/10/30 - Amazon Quick Introduces Quick Essentials
Amazon Quick now offers Quick Essentials for enterprises. In Regions where Amazon Quick is available, Quick Sight Reader users are upgraded to Quick Essentials at no additional per-user cost. Reader users can ask dashboards questions in natural language, such as "What drove the decline in March sales?", dig deeper with follow-up questions, and turn the answers into documents, presentations, and spreadsheets.
They can also use Research, which builds reports with citations from data, files, and the web, Flows, which automatically sends regular updates, and Apps, which lets you build tools without writing code. Existing dashboards and favorites remain as they are, and row-level and column-level security applies to all answers. It is being enabled gradually in Regions where Quick's AI features are available.
API Changes
2026/10/01 - Amazon QuickSight - 15 updated methods
HierarchyFilter (hierarchy filter) is now supported in analyses and dashboards. Also, 2-legged OAuth is now supported for Databricks data sources.
2026/10/09 - Amazon QuickSight - 4 updated methods
Fine-grained permission settings through the custom permissions API are now supported for Gong action connectors (GongAction, CreateAndUpdateGongAction, ShareGongAction, UseGongAction) and for create, update, and share operations on 45 data source connectors, including Amazon S3 and Snowflake.
2026/10/21 - Amazon QuickSight - 2 updated methods
When creating a data source, certificate credentials for 2-legged OAuth for SharePoint and OneDrive, and service account credentials for Google Workspace, are now supported.
AWS Glue
New Features and Updates
2026/10/01 - AWS Glue Data Catalog now supports table optimization, statistics, and crawlers for Apache Iceberg V3
AWS Glue Data Catalog table optimization, statistics, and crawlers now support Apache Iceberg V3 tables. With table optimization, you can compact V3 tables using the binpack, sort, and z-order strategies to improve query performance, and reduce storage costs by removing expired snapshots and orphaned files. Optimization also supports V3 data types such as variant, geospatial, and nanosecond-precision timestamps.
You can generate NDV (number of distinct values) statistics, which analytics engines use to create query plans, for V3 tables, and you can use crawlers to discover V3 tables stored in Amazon S3 and register them in the Data Catalog. Each feature is available in all Regions where it is available.
2026/10/26 - AWS Glue Data Catalog now supports OAuth for Apache Iceberg REST Catalog APIs
The Apache Iceberg REST Catalog (IRC) API of AWS Glue Data Catalog now supports OAuth 2.0 bearer token authentication using AWS Sign-In. Engines such as Apache Spark, Trino, and Apache Flink, as well as external partners, can authenticate to the Iceberg endpoint using OAuth 2.0 tokens in addition to SigV4.
Because OIDC ID tokens are exchanged for short-lived tokens using OAuth 2.0 Token Exchange (RFC 8693), you can grant partners access to Iceberg tables without distributing AWS credentials. Access is still controlled by IAM and Lake Formation permissions, and it is available in all Regions where Glue and Lake Formation are available.
API Changes
2026/10/02 - AWS Glue - 5 updated methods
Refresh token (REFRESH_TOKEN) has been added to the OAuth 2.0 grant types supported by Glue connections.
2026/10/08 - AWS Glue - 2 new methods
New APIs, GetSystemLogsForJobRun and GetSystemLogsForSession, have been added. Account administrators can retrieve system-space logs for Glue jobs and sessions with fine-grained access control (FGAC) enabled.
2026/10/12 - AWS Glue - 4 new 6 updated methods
New APIs for retrieving and listing AWS Glue Data Quality evaluation results, GetDataQualityResultV2, BatchGetDataQualityResultV2, and ListDataQualityResultsV2, have been added. They return data quality results published from any supported data processing engine.
2026/10/13 - AWS Glue - 4 updated methods
You can now add custom namespaces for Amazon S3 Tables in Glue zero-ETL integrations.
2026/10/22 - AWS Glue - 23 updated methods
Large worker types are now supported in AWS Glue.
Amazon Redshift
New Features and Updates
2026/10/01 - Amazon Redshift now supports cross-Region queries for your data lake
Amazon Redshift can now query data lake tables in Amazon S3 located in a different Region. Because you can query the data directly without copying or replicating it in advance, it becomes easier to do global analytics, aggregate reports across Regions, and query data that must be kept in a specific Region. Also, when you use enhanced VPC routing, data lake query traffic between S3 and Redshift stays within your VPC and does not traverse the public network.
Both features work on the unified data lake query engine that runs directly on RG provisioned clusters and Serverless compute, and are available in all Regions where RG provisioned clusters and Serverless are available. Standard data transfer charges apply to cross-Region queries.
2026/10/05 - Amazon Redshift adds support for creating and refreshing Apache Iceberg materialized views
Amazon Redshift now supports creating and refreshing Apache Iceberg materialized views. The results of expensive joins and aggregations are computed once and stored as Iceberg tables in Amazon S3 or S3 table buckets registered in the Glue Data Catalog. You can create them with CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW ... USING ICEBERG, and the results can be queried from Iceberg-compatible engines such as Athena, Spark, Trino, and Snowflake.
Manual incremental refresh recomputes only the changed portions. For performance-critical dashboards, they can be read as RMS native materialized views. It is available in Regions that support Redshift Serverless and Graviton provisioned instances.
2026/10/28 - AWS Backup adds restore testing support for Amazon Redshift
Amazon Redshift is now supported in AWS Backup restore testing. You can run backup restore tests automatically and on a recurring basis to verify that Redshift backups can be restored successfully and to check how long the restore takes. A restore testing plan automatically selects recovery points, runs restores on a schedule, and measures the restore job completion time against the recovery time objective (RTO). Redshift resources are assigned by ARN or tag, and for each test you can choose whether to restore the latest recovery point or a random one. It is available in all Regions where both restore testing and Redshift are supported by AWS Backup.
2026/10/29 - Amazon Redshift announces hands-off automated cross-region backups
Amazon Redshift now offers a feature that automatically copies snapshots to another Region. Backups of provisioned clusters or Serverless workgroups can be created automatically in a Region you choose. Because the latest snapshots are copied continuously and incrementally to the destination Region without manual operations, you do not need to start a copy manually when an unexpected failure occurs. It works independently of the local snapshot schedule.
You enable the feature per cluster and set the destination Region and the retention period for the copied automated snapshots. The names of copied snapshots get a copy prefix in the destination Region. It is available in all commercial Regions and the GovCloud (US) Regions.
API Changes
2026/10/21 - Redshift Data API Service - 1 updated methods
The Redshift QueryUUID field has been added to the DescribeStatement response.
Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio
New Features and Updates
2026/10/09 - Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio now supports custom Tooling blueprints
Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio now supports custom Tooling blueprints. Domain administrators can define the foundation of a project with their own AWS CloudFormation templates and prepare project environments tailored to organization-specific requirements, such as IAM role names that follow internal naming conventions and custom permissions boundaries in place of AWS managed policies.
Templates can include any CloudFormation resources, such as Lake Formation permission grants, Athena workgroups, and VPC security groups, and can be used across multiple accounts and Regions. Templates are validated at registration and after deployment, and reserved parameters such as the project ID are set automatically. It is available in all Regions where SageMaker Unified Studio is available.
2026/10/26 - Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio adds light mode support for IDC-based domains
Light mode is now supported in IAM Identity Center (IDC)-based domains of Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio. You can now choose between dark and light themes in both IAM-based and IDC-based domains. In "Customize appearance" in profile settings, you can choose from dark mode, light mode, and a device setting that follows the OS setting, and the setting is retained across browsers and devices. It is available in all Regions where SageMaker Unified Studio is available.
2026/10/29 - Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio now supports custom designations
Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio now supports custom designations, named permission sets that control the actions project members can perform. Until now, the only designations were Owner and Contributor, which had almost the same permissions. Administrators create designations by selecting permissions in categories such as Catalog, Subscriptions, Connections, Notebooks, and Data Agent.
For example, you can allow a "Data Steward" to approve subscriptions and publish assets, and an "Analyst" to only query data and run notebooks. Designations are defined at the domain level, and you can create up to 10 in addition to Owner and Contributor. It is available in all Regions where SageMaker Unified Studio is available.
Amazon DataZone
API Changes
2026/10/08 - Amazon DataZone - 2 updated methods
Importing notebooks from multiple files is now supported. When you specify an ordered list of Amazon S3 objects (s3Files) in StartNotebookImport, a notebook with one cell per file is created. The type field lets you specify whether it is a DATA notebook or a SQL notebook.
2026/10/19 - Amazon DataZone - 4 updated methods
The Iceberg REST catalog connection types already available in Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio (ICEBERGRESTCATALOG, SNOWFLAKEICEBERGRESTCATALOG, DATABRICKSICEBERGRESTCATALOG) are now also supported in the SDK and CLI.
2026/10/21 - Amazon DataZone - 5 new 6 updated methods
APIs to create, get, update, and delete custom designations have been added. The designation field in the project membership and policy grant APIs can now take a value representing a custom designation, and a field to specify the ID of the custom designation has also been added.
AWS Lake Formation
API Changes
2026/10/13 - AWS Lake Formation - 8 new 12 updated methods
APIs for Simple Row-level Security have been added. They include APIs such as CreateRLSPolicy for creating, getting, updating, deleting, and listing row-level security policies, as well as AttachRLSPolicy and DetachRLSPolicy for attaching and detaching policies.
Amazon EMR
New Features and Updates
2026/10/01 - Serverless Storage on Amazon EMR Serverless now supports terabyte-scale shuffle
Serverless storage for Amazon EMR Serverless now supports shuffles of up to 1 TB. The previous per-job limit was 200 GB. You can run Apache Spark workloads that handle large amounts of shuffle data, such as large table joins between multi-TB datasets and complex aggregations of high-cardinality data. It also supports spilling, which evicts data to disk in memory-intensive processing, improving job reliability and success rates. It is available with emr-7.14 and emr-spark-8.1 and later, in the 18 Regions where EMR Serverless is available.
2026/10/12 - Amazon EMR now supports native data quality checks in Apache Spark jobs
Amazon EMR can now natively validate data quality within Apache Spark jobs. Amazon EMR Data Quality, which is based on AWS Glue Data Quality, is available at no additional cost and uses the same DQDL rules and APIs as AWS Glue. Rules can be written in a Spark script or referenced from those stored in the Glue Data Catalog, and can be applied at any stage of the pipeline.
There are more than 30 types of rules, including dynamic rules and ML-based anomaly detection, and depending on the evaluation results you can fail the pipeline, exclude invalid records, or quarantine them. It supports Iceberg, Hudi, and Delta Lake, as well as EC2, EKS, and Serverless, and is available with emr-spark-8.1.0 in all commercial Regions, the GovCloud (US) Regions, and the China Regions.
2026/10/16 - Amazon EMR Serverless now supports IPv6 and dual-stack connectivity
Amazon EMR Serverless now supports IPv6 and dual-stack connectivity. By specifying dual-stack (IPv4 and IPv6) or IPv6-only subnets, you can run Apache Spark and Apache Hive jobs over IPv6 within your VPC. This addresses IPv4 address exhaustion in VPCs and subnets caused by growing worker counts, as well as compliance requirements calling for IPv6 adoption. Backward compatibility with existing IPv4 workloads is maintained. It is available for all release versions, at no additional cost, in all Regions where EMR Serverless is available.
2026/10/23 - Amazon EMR on EKS reduces EMR charge by 30 percent
For Amazon EMR on EKS, the EMR charge that is added to the Amazon EKS charge has been reduced by 30%. Both the per-vCPU-hour and per-GB-hour charges are covered, and Amazon EKS pricing does not change. The new pricing is applied automatically to all workloads running on EMR on EKS, and no action is required on the user side. It covers all Regions where EMR on EKS is available.
API Changes
2026/10/08 - EMR Serverless - 1 updated methods
System profile logs are now supported in Spark Connect sessions with AWS Lake Formation enabled.
Amazon MSK
New Features and Updates
2026/10/22 - Amazon MSK Connect now supports pausing and resuming connectors
Amazon MSK Connect now supports pausing and resuming connectors. You can use it when you want to stop the flow of data during maintenance of a source database or destination, or when you want to stop processing while investigating upstream or downstream issues. Previously, to stop a connector you had to delete it and recreate it. A paused connector retains its configuration, capacity settings, and committed offsets, and when resumed, its tasks continue processing from the last committed offset. It is available at no additional cost in all Regions where MSK Connect is available.
2026/10/29 - Amazon MSK Connect now supports updating connector plugins and worker configurations
Amazon MSK Connect now lets you update the custom plugin and worker configuration of an existing connector. You can switch to a new version of the connector code with updated dependencies, change key and value converters, and adjust producer and consumer properties to suit throughput and latency. Previously you had to delete and recreate the connector, but with this update the connector retains its committed offsets, and after the update completes, tasks continue processing from where they left off. It is available at no additional cost in all Regions where MSK Connect is supported.
2026/10/30 - Managed Prometheus collectors now support Amazon MSK consumer-group metrics
Managed Prometheus collectors can now collect Amazon MSK consumer group metrics. They collect Kafka exporter metrics and consumer group lag metrics from MSK clusters and ingest them into an Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus workspace or Amazon CloudWatch. You do not need to operate the collection agent yourself. You can monitor the state of Kafka streams and consumer processing performance, and find where processing is stalling in streaming applications. It is available in all Regions where managed Prometheus collectors are generally available.
2026/10/30 - Amazon MSK now supports TLS 1.3 for data in transit
Amazon MSK provisioned clusters can now use TLS 1.3 through encryption policies. TLS 1.3 is increasingly required by compliance frameworks and corporate security standards, and is also one of the prerequisites for post-quantum cryptography. You opt in by selecting a named security policy in the cluster settings, and existing clusters do not change until you apply a policy.
With a policy that allows both TLS 1.2 and 1.3, clients connect using the highest version they support, so you can upgrade clients gradually and then switch to a TLS 1.3-only policy. It is available at no additional cost in all Regions where MSK Provisioned is available.
API Changes
2026/10/22 - Managed Streaming for Kafka Connect - 2 new 7 updated methods
The asynchronous PauseConnector and ResumeConnector APIs now let you pause and resume MSK Connect connectors. A paused connector retains its configuration and committed offsets and resumes from where it left off. The operation ARN returned by each call can be tracked with DescribeConnectorOperation.
2026/10/28 - Managed Streaming for Kafka Connect - 2 updated methods
The UpdateConnector API can now update a connector's custom plugin and worker configuration. MSK Connect checks the state of the connector and tasks after the update and rolls back if it fails. The operation ARN returned by each call can be tracked with DescribeConnectorOperation.
Amazon MWAA
New Features and Updates
2026/10/15 - Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow now offers AI agent skills
Amazon MWAA now offers AI agent skills from the Agent Toolkit for AWS. From an AI coding assistant that supports agent skills, you can author, debug, and test MWAA workflows and upgrade MWAA environments. There are four skills: authoring-mwaa-workflow, debugging-mwaa-workflow, testing-mwaa-workflow, and upgrading-mwaa-environments.
For example, if you describe an ETL pipeline in natural language, the authoring skill generates a DAG that includes task dependencies and error handling. It works with both MWAA provisioned and Serverless environments, and you use it by installing the aws-data-analytics plugin. It is available in all Regions where MWAA is available.
Amazon OpenSearch Serverless
New Features and Updates
2026/10/22 - Amazon OpenSearch Serverless now supports a 5-second default refresh interval
In Amazon OpenSearch Serverless, the default refresh interval for search collections and vector collections has been shortened from 10 seconds to 5 seconds. The refresh interval is the setting that determines how long it takes for ingested documents to become searchable. No configuration changes or work are required, and data you write can be searched sooner. For full-text search on frequently updated content and vector use cases such as RAG, semantic search, and recommendations, you can get the latest data sooner. It applies to the next generation of OpenSearch Serverless and is available in all 24 Regions where OpenSearch Serverless is available.
2026/10/22 - Amazon OpenSearch Service introduces intelligent ingestion for logs and documents in Amazon S3
Next-generation (NextGen) collections of Amazon OpenSearch Serverless now offer fully managed intelligent ingestion, which ingests logs and documents stored in Amazon S3 so they can be searched. It can be set up with a few clicks in the console or a single API call, and there is no ingestion infrastructure to manage. It supports logs and structured data in JSON, NDJSON, and JSON array formats, as well as unstructured files in PDF, Word, plain text, and Markdown, and automatically performs data type detection, document parsing, image caption generation, chunking, vector embedding generation, and indexing.
You use ingestion jobs for migrations and backfills, and ingestion streams to keep the index in sync with new objects. You pay only for what is actually processed, and it is available in 7 Regions.
2026/10/28 - Introducing time series collections for the next generation of Amazon OpenSearch Serverless
Time series collections are now available in the next generation of Amazon OpenSearch Serverless. You can ingest, store, and analyze log, metric, trace, and event data without provisioning or managing clusters. It automatically absorbs ingestion spikes, recent data can be queried quickly, and months to years of history can be searched at low cost.
A low-cost warm storage tier has been added to the existing hot storage, and you can choose how long data stays before moving to warm storage. Each collection has up to 100 TB of hot storage, and alerting and anomaly detection are also available. It is available in all Regions where OpenSearch Serverless is available.
API Changes
2026/10/22 - OpenSearch Service Serverless - 8 new 1 updated methods
APIs for ingesting data from Amazon S3 into OpenSearch Serverless collections have been added. You can create, get, list, and cancel ingestion jobs, and create, get, list, and delete ingestion streams (CreateIngestionJob, CreateIngestionStream, and so on).
Amazon OpenSearch Service
New Features and Updates
2026/10/02 - Amazon OpenSearch Service introduces validation advisory for domain configuration changes
For Amazon OpenSearch Service domain configuration changes, validation results are now classified into Critical, which blocks the change, and Warning, which lets you review and proceed. Previously, validation results were either pass or block, and there was no way to indicate changes that can be applied but carry risk. For example, warnings are raised when the dedicated coordinator nodes are too small for the data node configuration, or when the number of shards exceeds the recommended limit.
You can acknowledge warnings when submitting a change, check the severity in dry-run results, and configure the acknowledgment in AWS CloudFormation templates. It supports domains of both OpenSearch and Elasticsearch versions, and is available in all Regions where OpenSearch Service is available.
2026/10/12 - Amazon OpenSearch Service now supports index-level encryption
Amazon OpenSearch Service can now encrypt data at rest with a separate AWS KMS customer managed key for each index. Data with different owners or sensitivity levels can be protected with separate keys on the same domain. For example, in a multi-tenant application, each tenant's data can be encrypted with its own key. When creating a new domain, you set the encryption mode to Native and specify a customer managed key, and afterward you register additional keys with the domain and use them to encrypt individual indexes. It applies to domains on OpenSearch 3.3 and later, and is available at no additional cost in 14 Regions, including the Tokyo Region.
API Changes
2026/10/08 - Amazon OpenSearch Service - 7 updated methods
A new EncryptionMode (DISK or NATIVE) has been added to EncryptionAtRestOptions in CreateDomain and UpdateDomainConfig. You can choose engine-native index-level encryption on supported domains.
2026/10/19 - Amazon OpenSearch Service - 7 updated methods
A new TLS security policy that supports FIPS and post-quantum cryptography (Policy-Min-TLS-1-2-FIPS-PQ-2026-10) has been added.
2026/10/28 - Amazon OpenSearch Service - 6 new methods
APIs for easily setting up replication relationships between OpenSearch clusters (AddReplicationPeer, DescribeDomainReplication, and others) have been added. With SwitchoverReplication for planned switchovers and FailoverReplication for unplanned failovers, you can ensure high availability when a failure occurs in a single Region.
AWS Clean Rooms
New Features and Updates
2026/10/20 - AWS Clean Rooms now supports Databricks as a data source
AWS Clean Rooms can now use Databricks as a data source. Collaboration members can query Databricks tables shared via Delta Sharing directly within a collaboration, without moving the data or exposing it to the other party. Previously, you had to export or replicate Databricks data to Amazon S3 and then use it as a table. You register a table by specifying the workspace URL, schema, table, and Delta Sharing share. Databricks follows AWS Glue, Snowflake, and Amazon Athena as a data source.
API Changes
2026/10/20 - AWS Clean Rooms Service - 4 updated methods
Data stored in Databricks can now be used in collaborations with partners without moving it or sharing it with collaborators.
2026/10/29 - AWS Clean Rooms Service - 8 updated methods
Analysis templates in PySpark 2.0 format are now supported. You can also choose the file format (CSV or Parquet) of protected job results written to Amazon S3, and it can also be specified in the membership's default job result settings.
Amazon S3 Tables
New Features and Updates
2026/10/01 - Amazon S3 Tables now support up to 100 table buckets per AWS Region in an AWS account
For Amazon S3 Tables, the number of table buckets you can create per Region in an AWS account has increased from 10 to 100. This allows you to create up to 1 million tables per Region. You can create separate table buckets for each dataset, workload, and team, and apply settings such as encryption, access policies, and replication at the table bucket level. The new quota is applied by default to all accounts at no additional cost and is available in all Regions where S3 Tables is available. If you need more than this, you can request an increase from AWS Support.
Finally
In October 2026, updates related to Apache Iceberg continued in Amazon Redshift and AWS Glue Data Catalog. Redshift gained Iceberg materialized view creation and cross-Region data lake queries, and Glue Data Catalog gained Iceberg V3 table optimization and OAuth authentication for the Iceberg REST Catalog API. There were also several updates that reduce operational effort, such as pausing, resuming, and updating the settings of Amazon MSK Connect connectors, and Amazon Redshift's automated cross-Region backups and AWS Backup restore testing. If any of these updates interest you, please give them a try.
