What is Trino?

Trino is a distributed SQL query engine designed for running analytics on large datasets across various data sources, such as data lakes and lakehouses, without storing the data itself. Originally developed by Facebook as Presto in 2012 to expedite queries on massive datasets, Trino was forked in 2019 by its co-founders to enhance its features and adoption in the data community. Trino's architecture supports massively parallel processing and a connector-based system, allowing it to efficiently handle federated queries across multiple data systems. It is particularly suited for analytics workloads, offering ANSI SQL compatibility, which facilitates integration with other data analytics systems. While Trino is open-source, Starburst, the main contributor to its development, provides managed versions like Starburst Galaxy, adding proprietary features and simplifying deployment for organizations lacking the resources to manage Trino independently. Compared to other tools like Spark and Presto, Trino excels in analytics performance but is not directly in competition with Spark, which is better suited for ETL workloads.