An Introduction to Trino for Big Data

By SQream

4.4.2023 twitter linkedin facebook

In today’s data-driven environment, data is continually expanding in quantity and complexity, which makes its evaluation and management challenging. Many businesses are using multiple big data tools and technologies to solve this problem. One such tool that offers a potent foundation for accessing and analyzing massive data that’s located on disparate locations is Trino, formerly known as PrestoSQL. In this post, we’ll introduce Trino architecture and examine how it’s used in big data analytics. 

What Is Trino?

Trino is a distributed SQL query engine that’s designed to perform queries faster against any amount of data. Trino’s architecture has a wide range of capabilities that help businesses. It acts as an SQL query engine for huge open-source relational and non-relational databases and is made for distributed computing. Trino’s other strength rests in its ability to execute federated queries across multiple data sources. This facilitates the analysis and comprehension of complicated datasets. 

 

It has also been built to handle ad-hoc querying. This allows users to execute queries instantly without the need for pre-aggregation or pre-established data models. Trino makes it simpler for users to find the solutions they want by supporting a wide range of common SQL methods, including filtering, aggregating, and sorting.

Features of Trino

Trino offers several characteristics that make it a crucial tool for data analysts and businesses trying to effectively manage and analyze large amounts of data. In this section, we’ll go over some of Trino’s most vital attributes, such as its capacity for massive data queries, data integration skills, connection, and federated query capabilities. 

Querying Huge Amounts of Data

Trino’s capacity for speedy and effective data querying is one of its most important characteristics. Trino has been designed to efficiently query huge amounts of data using distributed queries over numerous nodes. This makes it well suited for studying large volumes of data. Due to Trino’s distributed design, queries may be processed more quickly and with more scalability by being parallelized over numerous nodes. 

Data Integration

SQreamDB, The Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), Amazon S3, Cassandra, MySQL, and MongoDB are just a few data sources that Trino may combine. Data analysts may query data from several sources using a single SQL interface thanks to Trino’s data integration features. This simplifies the analysis of complicated datasets. Trino users may execute federated queries across several data sources, providing a complete picture of the data. It’s simpler to access and analyze data from many sources because of Trino’s connection to a wide variety of data sources. Trino can connect to SQreamDB, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and other databases and data warehouses. Trino can also connect to cloud storage services like Google Cloud Storage and Amazon S3

 

When working on a huge amount of data, SQreamDB can be the best possible choice. SQreamDB is a high-performance analytics database that’s designed to handle large volumes of data and run complex queries at scale. When combined with Trino, users can benefit from Trino’s distributed SQL query engine, which can parallelize queries across multiple nodes, and SQreamDB’s GPU-accelerated processing, which can significantly speed up queries. Trino can easily connect with SQreamDB through the JDBC connector. You can check out this easy guide for connecting Trino with SqreamDB. 

Federated Query Capabilities

Trino can query big data from several data sources, such as Hadoop, Cassandra, and relational databases. This is due to its federated query capabilities. Thanks to this capability, it’s simple to evaluate data from many sources without having to create intricate ETL pipelines. Trino’s federated queries enable complicated aggregations, joins, and data combining from several sources. 

For example, When Trino is connected to SQreamDB, users can use Trino’s SQL syntax to query data from both SQreamDB and other data sources that Trino supports, such as Hadoop, Cassandra, and MongoDB. This makes it easier for users to perform complex analytics tasks that require data from multiple sources.

Community Support

Trino has an active and large community of developers and practitioners who regularly contribute to the open-source community and help solve users’ queries on a daily basis through various online channels. 

In addition to the qualities described above, Trino offers several other features that make it a well-liked option for Big Data analytics. These attributes include a robust SQL interface, support for different SQL operations, and scalability. 

Pros of Trino

We’ll go over some of Trino’s benefits in this section, including its scalability, simplicity, open-source status, distributed design, and adaptability for Big Data. Before being made available as open-source software, Trino was first created at Facebook as PrestoSQL. Several of the biggest businesses in the world, including Netflix, Airbnb, and Uber, took notice of the initiative and are now using it.

Speed

Trino is made to do speedy and effective queries on massive datasets. Queries can be completed more quickly across numerous nodes in parallel thanks to Trino’s multi-tier architecture. Trino is perfect for interactive queries and real-time analytics because its in-memory query processing enables real-time query answers. 

Scale

Trino can scale up to handle large datasets with ease thanks to its distributed design. Trino is extremely scalable since it can easily add more nodes to its cluster as data quantity increases. This scalability is crucial for data-intensive systems that must analyze enormous volumes of data fast. 

Simplicity

The SQL interface provided by Trino makes it simple for data analysts to create and run queries. Trino has a simple learning curve and is more accessible to a larger variety of users since users don’t need to master complicated programming languages or tools to utilize it.

Open Source

Trino is an open-source technology, making it free to use and adaptable to the unique requirements of a business. Trino also benefits from the support and development resources offered by the open-source community, which keeps it abreast of the newest advancements in features and technology.

Distributed Architecture

Because of its distributed architecture, Trino is extremely available and fault-tolerant, and it can execute queries across numerous nodes. Trino can go on processing queries in the case of a node loss, making sure that data analytics operations are not halted. 

Versatility

Trino can query data from many sources, including relational databases, cloud storage services, and Hadoop clusters thanks to its data integration and federated query capabilities. Because of its adaptability, it’s perfect for businesses that need to undertake cross-source analysis and employ a variety of data sources for different use cases.

Cons of Trino

We’ll talk about some of Trino’s drawbacks in this section. These include its complexity, compatibility concerns, lack of built-in security, and resource needs.

Complexity

Trino can be more difficult to set up and operate than other Big Data tools due to its distributed nature. To set up and fine-tune Trino for a given use case, users must have a solid grasp of distributed systems and SQL. Trino’s connection with other tools and systems could require more knowledge and resources. 

Attempting to combine Trino with other data management solutions or when transferring data between systems may lead to compatibility problems. In order to ensure compatibility and reduce data loss or corruption, users might need to invest more time and resources.

Lack of Built-in Security

As Trino lacks built-in security safeguards, users must take additional security precautions to safeguard sensitive data. This may be a big problem, especially for businesses that deal with sensitive information or have to comply with regulations. To make sure that Trino’s security measures match their unique requirements, users might need to commit additional resources. 

Resource Requirements

A sizable amount of computer power is needed for Trino’s distributed architecture to function well. For Trino to handle large volumes of data and execute queries rapidly, users must have access to high-performance computing resources, such as several nodes and speedy storage. Because of the cost, only a few businesses may be able to employ Trino for their data analytics requirements. 

 

Trino is still a wonderful option for businesses working with a lot of data for analytics activities, despite all these drawbacks. Trino and SQreamDB working together also provide a scalable, adaptable, and high-performance solution for managing big amounts of data and carrying out difficult analytical tasks. Also, users find it simpler to query and analyze data from numerous sources using a familiar interface thanks to Trino’s support for a variety of data sources and file formats and SQreamDB’s support for conventional SQL syntax.

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Conclusion

After reading this post, you now know what Trino is and why it’s used. You’ve also seen some of Trino’s strongest attributes, such as its data integration, networking, and federated query capabilities. You’ve been introduced to the scalability factor of the Trino, including simplicity, open-source nature, distributed architecture, and adaptability. Lastly, you’ve seen some of Trino’s drawbacks, such as its resource needs, compatibility concerns, complexity, and lack of built-in security. Ultimately, you gained knowledge about Trino’s advantages and disadvantages as a Big Data analytics platform. 

 

This post was written by Gourav Bais. Gourav is an applied machine learning engineer skilled in computer vision/deep learning pipeline development, creating machine learning models, retraining systems, and transforming data science prototypes to production-grade solutions.