How much data do I need to have to make use of Presto?

Question

How much data do I need to have to make use of Presto? The web site states that it can query data sizes from gigabytes to petabytes. I understand how it is used to query very large datasets, but is anyone using it for hundreds of gigabytes?

Answer 1

Currently, Presto is most useful if you already have an existing Hive installation. If you are using Hive, you should definitely try Presto. If all your data fits in a relational database like PostgreSQL or MySQL on a single machine, and you are happy with the performance, then keep using that.

However, Presto should be much faster than either of those databases on a single machine for analytic queries because it executes a query in parallel. Neither of those databases parallelize the execution of individual queries. At the moment, using Presto requires setting up HDFS and Hive (even on a single machine), so getting started will be more work than if you already have an existing Hive installation.