fix(athena): skip retry of deterministic errors with configurable timeout handling

[dtaniwaki]

resolves #1813
resolves #1820
docs N/A

Problem

The outer retry loop in AthenaCursor.execute retries all exceptions except TOO_MANY_OPEN_PARTITIONS. This means non-transient errors like query timeout (#1813) and query exhausted resources (#1820) are retried up to num_retries times, wasting compute cost and time.

Solution

• Query exhausted resources: Always skip retry (deterministic — the query exceeds Athena's memory capacity).
• Query timeout: Skip retry only when skip_retry_on_query_timeout: true is set in the profile config. Since timeout can be caused by transient load, this is opt-in rather than hardcoded.

Usage

# profiles.yml
my_profile:
  target: dev
  outputs:
    dev:
      type: athena
      skip_retry_on_query_timeout: true  # default: false
      ...

Checklist

• I have read the contributing guide and understand what's expected of me
• I have run this code in development and it appears to resolve the stated issue
• This PR includes tests, or tests are not required/relevant for this PR
• This PR has no interface changes (e.g. macros, cli, logs, json artifacts, config files, adapter interface, etc) or this PR has already received feedback and approval from Product or DX

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Updates dbt-athena’s query execution retry logic to avoid wasting time/cost on deterministic Athena failures (query timeouts), aligning behavior with issue #1813.

Changes:

• Exclude Athena “Query timeout” failures from the outer AthenaCursor.execute retry loop.
• Add an unreleased changelog entry describing the fix.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

File	Description
dbt-athena/src/dbt/adapters/athena/connections.py	Adjusts tenacity retry predicate to skip retries when the error message includes “Query timeout”.
dbt-athena/.changes/unreleased/Fixes-20260330-095539.yaml	Records the fix in the changelog system.

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

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Pull request overview

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[dtaniwaki]

@iconara As you mentioned on the other similar PR, do you think this PR is also covered by #1637 ?

[iconara]

@dtaniwaki yes, that PR will only retry on a few well-defined errors so the ones here should be covered too.

[dtaniwaki]

@iconara I'm using your fix in my dbt-athena custom build for a week and found no issues so far.

[dtaniwaki]

Superseded by #1637 (PyAthena→boto3 migration), now merged into main. The new boto3-based cursor only retries ICEBERG_COMMIT_ERROR (throttling API errors are handled separately), so ICEBERG_FILESYSTEM_ERROR / deterministic errors like query timeouts are no longer retried by design. Closing as no longer needed.