For what purpose is Amazon Athena primarily used?

Amazon Athena is essentially designed to allow users to query vast amounts of data stored in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. This serverless interactive query service enables users to run ad-hoc queries on data without needing to set up or manage any infrastructure, simplifying the process of data analysis. Users can utilize SQL queries to retrieve insights from structured, semi-structured, or unstructured data stored in S3 efficiently.

Athena supports various data formats, such as CSV, JSON, ORC, Parquet, and Avro, making it a flexible tool for data analysis. Its integration with services like AWS Glue also allows for easily managing data cataloging and schema definitions, which enhances the querying experience.

While the other options involve valuable capabilities in the AWS ecosystem, they do not pertain to the core function of Amazon Athena. Analyzing real-time streaming data pertains more to services like Amazon Kinesis, creating machine learning models is typically done with Amazon SageMaker, and forecasting AWS resource consumption involves tools like AWS Cost Explorer or AWS Budgets. Thus, the use of standard SQL to query data in Amazon S3 distinguishes Athena's primary purpose.