1.1. Use Cases

Since Presto is being called a database by many members of the community,it makes sense to begin with a definition of what Presto is not.

Presto is a tool designed to efficiently query vast amounts of datausing distributed queries. If you work with terabytes or petabytes ofdata, you are likely using tools that interact with Hadoop and HDFS.Presto was designed as an alternative to tools that query HDFSusing pipelines of MapReduce jobs such as Hive or Pig, but Prestois not limited to accessing HDFS. Presto can be and has been extendedto operate over different kinds of data sources including traditionalrelational databases and other data sources such as Cassandra.

Presto is an open source project that operates under the auspices ofFacebook. It was invented at Facebook and the project continues tobe developed by both Facebook internal developers and a number ofthird-party developers in the community.