What is Trino?
Overview
Trino is an open-source distributed SQL engine that allows you to run queries across multiple data platforms — all at once — without moving your data.
It’s the underlying technology that powers the Universal Query Engine of Promethium’s AI Insights Fabric, enabling fast, federated access to your data no matter where it lives.
How Trino Works
Trino is a distributed SQL engine. Here’s how it works:
- You write a SQL query (generated by Mantra or manually)
- Trino receives the query and breaks it into parts
- It sends each part to the correct data source (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks)
- Each system processes its portion of the query locally
- Trino joins the results and returns them as one unified answer
All of this happens without copying or moving the data.
How Trino Fits Into Promethium
In Promethium, Trino is a core component of the Intelligent Edge — the part of the platform that lives inside your cloud environment.
For the following operations Promethium is using Trino in the background to access data across your connected platforms and return on demand results:
- Browse the Data Catalog
- Create a Datamap
- Use Mantra to ask a business question
- Publish a table or view
Do I Need to Learn Trino?
Not at all.
You don’t need to install, configure, or manage Trino — Promethium handles that for you.
However, if you’re writing custom SQL or debugging a complex query, it helps to understand:
- What
catalog.schema.tablemeans - Why certain joins behave differently across systems
- How to write SQL that works across Trino’s connectors
For more on this, check out SQL Guidelines for Trino →
Where Did Trino Come From?
Trino was originally created at Facebook (now Meta, under the name Presto) to power fast analytics at scale. It has since grown into one of the most popular open-source query engines, used by leading technology compnies such as:
- Netflix
- Uber
Promethium builds on top of Trino to give you enterprise-grade query performance across your entire data estate — with zero data movement.