Unable to Create Default Database in AWS Glue Catalog

Issue

When an EMR job is started, you receive an error in your logs saying that it does not have enough permissions to create the default database in the AWS Glue catalog. The stack trace may look something like this:

[ARN] is not authorized to perform: glue:CreateDatabase on resource: [ARN] because no resource-based policy allows the glue:CreateDatabase action

Cause

EMR is trying to create a Glue database in your AWS account, and your account may not have permission to create it. This is an EMR default behavior that is automatically calling the create database operation.

Resolution

Since there is no usage or hard dependency by Tecton and since EMR handles the failure gracefully, this issue is non-fatal and is safe to ignore.

1. The easiest way to resolve the error is adding the glue:CreateDatabase permission and have EMR create that database. Once added, the permission can be removed after at least one run has created the default database.

2. You may already have AWS Glue catalog added, which EMR is unnecessarily trying to add the database for your specific user account. Since you already have it added, the error is safe to ignore.