Apache Calcite vs Presto

Apache Calcite is a free, open-source data management framework for applications that need database-management components without built-in storage. It provides an industry-standard SQL parser, validator, and JDBC driver. Queries are represented as relational algebra, then transformed with planning rules and a cost model for optimization. Calcite can mediate between applications and several storage locations or processing engines, and can push computation to a source database. Listed adapters include Arrow, Cassandra, CSV, Druid, Elasticsearch, JDBC, MongoDB, Redis, Spark, and Splunk. Its JDBC driver supports local connections and remote connections using JSON over HTTP or Protobuf over HTTP. Calcite is available as source and through Maven, for API or self-hosted use. Build prerequisites include Git and Java JDK 8u220 or later, with Java 11 preferred. It does not store data; each source must be registered through a schema or adapter.

Presto is an open-source distributed SQL query engine for working with large datasets across different data sources. Its ANSI SQL interface can query information where it is stored and combine data from multiple sources in one query, for both interactive and batch workloads. The project lists ad hoc queries, reporting and dashboards, and open lakehouse workloads among its uses. Documented connectors include BigQuery, Cassandra, Delta Lake, Elasticsearch, Hive, Iceberg, Kafka, MongoDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Redis. Presto can be installed from a server tarball or deployed with Homebrew, Docker, or Helm. Security options include Kerberos, LDAP, password-file authentication, access controls, secure internal communication, and OAuth 2.0. Users can work through its CLI or Console, connect with DBeaver or Tableau, use Java, Python, Go, or JavaScript clients, or access the REST API. The project is free and open source, overseen by the Presto Foundation, which describes it as independent of any single company. The documentation identifies release 0.299, while the getting-started page still refers to version 0 from June 2022.