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Trino

Federated SQL that can melt the source if you are careless

5 questions with solutions

  1. Q1NetflixAppleLyft

    What does Trino store?

    Solution

    Nothing durable of yours. Coordinator + workers query catalogs. Gold tables live in Iceberg, Hive, or a warehouse. Calling Trino a warehouse is a fail.

  2. Q2ShopifyStripeSquare

    Why did we take down prod Postgres?

    Solution

    A federated connector without pushdown and a dashboard SELECT *. Point Trino at a replica, or do not point it at OLTP. This is the classic Trino incident.

  3. Q3AppleNetflixAirbnb

    Trino or Spark SQL on the same Iceberg table?

    Solution

    Trino for interactive federation. Spark for heavy ETL. Same table, different engines — that is the lakehouse pitch. Two writers is still forbidden.

  4. Q4StarburstComcastLinkedIn

    SELECT * on a 400-column fact. What happens?

    Solution

    Workers shuffle the world. Column prune in the SQL and in the file format. Trino is not magic; it is a distributed scan.

  5. Q5Capital OneJPMorganWalmart

    When is federation the wrong design?

    Solution

    When you need a stable SLA, cost attribution, or joins that hammer three systems. Land a table. Federation is for exploration and for sources you refuse to copy — not for the 9:00 exec dashboard.

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