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Amazon EMR VS Presto DB

Compare Amazon EMR VS Presto DB and see what are their differences

Amazon EMR logo Amazon EMR

Amazon Elastic MapReduce is a web service that makes it easy to quickly process vast amounts of data.

Presto DB logo Presto DB

Distributed SQL Query Engine for Big Data (by Facebook)
  • Amazon EMR Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-02
  • Presto DB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-18

Amazon EMR features and specs

  • Scalability
    Amazon EMR makes it easy to provision one, hundreds, or thousands of compute instances in minutes. You can easily scale your cluster up or down based on your needs.
  • Cost-effectiveness
    You only pay for what you use with EMR. There are no upfront fees. You can also leverage EC2 Spot Instances for a more cost-effective solution.
  • Ease of Use
    Amazon EMR has a user-friendly interface and integrates with a wide range of AWS services, making it easy to set up and manage big data frameworks like Apache Hadoop, Spark, etc.
  • Managed Service
    Amazon EMR takes care of the setup, configuration, and tuning of the big data environments, allowing you to focus on your data processing rather than managing infrastructure.
  • Security
    EMR integrates with AWS security features such as IAM for fine-grained access control, encryption options, and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for network security.
  • Flexibility
    Supports multiple big data frameworks including Hadoop, Spark, HBase, Presto, and more, facilitating a wide range of use cases.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon EMR

  • Complex Pricing Model
    EMR's pricing can be complex with costs varying based on instance types, storage, and data transfer. Predicting costs may be challenging.
  • Data Transfer Costs
    If your applications require transferring large amounts of data in and out of EMR, the associated costs can be significant.
  • Learning Curve
    Although EMR is easier to manage compared to on-premises solutions, there is still a learning curve associated with mastering the service and optimizing its various settings.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Since EMR is an AWS service, you may find it difficult to migrate to another service or cloud provider without significant re-engineering.
  • Dependency on AWS Ecosystem
    The full potential of EMR is best realized when integrated with other AWS services. This can be limiting if your architecture uses services from multiple cloud providers.

Presto DB features and specs

  • High-Performance Query Engine
    Presto is designed for high-performance querying, capable of performing complex analytics and large-scale data processing at interactive speeds.
  • Distributed SQL Query Engine
    Presto can scale out to large clusters of machines, allowing for efficient distribution of queries over multiple servers to handle big data workloads.
  • Versatility
    Supports querying data from multiple data sources such as Hadoop, relational databases, NoSQL databases, and cloud object storage within a single query.
  • ANSI-SQL Compatibility
    Presto supports ANSI SQL, making it easier for users familiar with SQL to adapt and write queries without a steep learning curve.
  • Open Source
    Presto is an open-source project, which means it benefits from continuous community contributions and improvements, keeping it up-to-date and robust.
  • Extensible
    Presto's architecture is designed to be extensible, allowing users to add custom functions and connectors, tailored to specific needs.

Possible disadvantages of Presto DB

  • Resource Intensive
    High performance comes with significant resource requirements, necessitating robust infrastructure to realize its full potential.
  • Complex Configuration
    Setting up and configuring Presto can be complex and time-consuming, often requiring expertise and an understanding of its various components.
  • Limited Support for Transactions
    Presto is primarily designed for reading data and performing analytics, and it has limited support for transactional processing compared to traditional relational databases.
  • Community Support
    While it has a vibrant open-source community, users may find the support less comprehensive than that provided by commercial enterprise solutions.
  • Latency for Small Queries
    Designed for big data and complex queries, Presto may exhibit higher latency for small, simple queries compared to specialized databases optimized for such use cases.
  • Maintenance Overhead
    Managing and maintaining a Presto cluster can be labor-intensive, requiring ongoing tuning and maintenance to ensure optimal performance and reliability.

Analysis of Amazon EMR

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Amazon EMR is generally considered a good option for organizations that need to handle large-scale data processing and analysis. Its integration with the AWS ecosystem, flexibility in resource management, and support for a wide array of big data frameworks make it a strong contender in the cloud-based big data processing market.

Why this product is good

  • Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce) is a robust cloud service provided by AWS for processing and analyzing large datasets quickly and cost-effectively. It simplifies running big data frameworks like Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark on AWS, offering scalability, flexibility, and integration with other AWS services. EMR is favored for its ability to dynamically allocate resources, thus optimizing both performance and cost for big data processing needs.

Recommended for

    Amazon EMR is recommended for data engineers, data scientists, and IT professionals who need to manage and process large datasets in a scalable, efficient, and cost-effective manner. It is especially suitable for businesses that are already using AWS services and want to leverage a tightly integrated ecosystem. Additionally, it is a good choice for organizations that require rapid and flexible data analysis capabilities provided by frameworks such as Hadoop, Spark, HBase, and Presto.

Analysis of Presto DB

Overall verdict

  • PrestoDB is considered a strong choice for organizations needing to perform fast and complex analytic queries. Its ability to execute SQL queries on big data at lightning speeds makes it an attractive tool for data-driven organizations. However, the choice of PrestoDB depends on specific use cases, existing infrastructure, and the team's familiarity with its architecture and operational demands.

Why this product is good

  • PrestoDB is a highly-regarded distributed SQL query engine that excels in speed and efficiency for querying large datasets. It's designed for running interactive analytic queries against data sources of all sizes. Some of its core strengths include its ability to query data across a wide variety of sources, scalability, and strong community support. It's often chosen for its capability to integrate seamlessly in environments requiring fast data processing and analysis without the need to move or transform data extensively.

Recommended for

    PrestoDB is ideal for technology firms, data-driven companies, and organizations in need of real-time data analytics. It is especially well-suited for those with existing big data frameworks (like Hadoop, Kafka, and Cassandra) who require a performant query engine to leverage large datasets efficiently. It's recommended for teams familiar with distributed systems who need the flexibility and speed offered by PrestoDB's architecture.

Amazon EMR videos

Amazon EMR Masterclass

More videos:

  • Review - Deep Dive into What’s New in Amazon EMR - AWS Online Tech Talks
  • Tutorial - How to use Apache Hive and DynamoDB using Amazon EMR

Presto DB videos

No Presto DB videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Amazon EMR and Presto DB)
Data Dashboard
50 50%
50% 50
Big Data
100 100%
0% 0
Database Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Data Warehousing
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Presto DB might be a bit more popular than Amazon EMR. We know about 10 links to it since March 2021 and only 10 links to Amazon EMR. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Amazon EMR mentions (10)

  • 5 Best Practices For Data Integration To Boost ROI And Efficiency
    There are different ways to implement parallel dataflows, such as using parallel data processing frameworks like Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, and Apache Flink, or using cloud-based services like Amazon EMR and Google Cloud Dataflow. It is also possible to use parallel dataflow frameworks to handle big data and distributed computing, like Apache Nifi and Apache Kafka. Source: about 2 years ago
  • What compute service i should use? Advice for a duck-tape kind of guy
    I'm going to guess you want something like EMR. Which can take large data sets segment it across multiple executors and coalesce the data back into a final dataset. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Processing a large text file containing millions of records.
    This is exactly the kind of workload EMR was made for, you can even run it serverless nowadays. Athena might be a viable option as well. Source: about 3 years ago
  • How to use Spark and Pandas to prepare big data
    Apache Spark is one of the most actively developed open-source projects in big data. The following code examples require that you have Spark set up and can execute Python code using the PySpark library. The examples also require that you have your data in Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service). All this is set up on AWS EMR (Elastic MapReduce). - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Beginner building a Hadoop cluster
    Check out https://aws.amazon.com/emr/. Source: about 3 years ago
View more

Presto DB mentions (10)

  • Data Warehouses and Data Lakes: Understanding Modern Data Storage Paradigms 📦
    Follow Presto at Official Website, Linkedin, Youtube, and Slack channel to join the community. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Introduction to Presto: Open Source SQL Query Engine that's changing Big Data Analytics
    In today's data-driven world, organizations face a constant challenge: how to analyse massive datasets quickly and efficiently without moving data between disparate systems. Presto, an open-source distributed SQL query engine that's revolutionizing how we approach big data analytics. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Twitter's 600-Tweet Daily Limit Crisis: Soaring GCP Costs and the Open Source Fix Elon Musk Ignored
    Presto: Presto is an open-source distributed SQL query engine that enables querying data from various sources. It provides fast and interactive analytics capabilities, supporting a wide range of data formats and integration with different storage systems. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Using IRIS and Presto for high-performance and scalable SQL queries
    The rise of Big Data projects, real-time self-service analytics, online query services, and social networks, among others, have enabled scenarios for massive and high-performance data queries. In response to this challenge, MPP (massively parallel processing database) technology was created, and it quickly established itself. Among the open-source MPP options, Presto (https://prestodb.io/) is the best-known... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Parsing logs from multiple data sources with Ahana and Cube
    Presto is an open-source distributed SQL query engine, originally developed at Facebook, now hosted under the Linux Foundation. It connects to multiple databases or other data sources (for example, Amazon S3). We can use a Presto cluster as a single compute engine for an entire data lake. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Amazon EMR and Presto DB, you can also consider the following products

Google BigQuery - A fully managed data warehouse for large-scale data analytics.

Looker - Looker makes it easy for analysts to create and curate custom data experiences—so everyone in the business can explore the data that matters to them, in the context that makes it truly meaningful.

Google Cloud Dataflow - Google Cloud Dataflow is a fully-managed cloud service and programming model for batch and streaming big data processing.

Qubole - Qubole delivers a self-service platform for big aata analytics built on Amazon, Microsoft and Google Clouds.

Jupyter - Project Jupyter exists to develop open-source software, open-standards, and services for interactive computing across dozens of programming languages. Ready to get started? Try it in your browser Install the Notebook.

Google Cloud Dataproc - Managed Apache Spark and Apache Hadoop service which is fast, easy to use, and low cost