Introduction
Manfred Moser and Cole Bowden are joined by Jan Waś to learn about the new Faker connector and the Datafaker library. You can use it to emulate data that does not exist on any storage, can shape it as you need, and then learn real SQL, build real reports, and make some real charts - all with fake data.
Video
- Introduction with Manfred and Cole (0.0s)
- Trino 471 (48.0s)
- Trino Gateway 14 (437.0s)
- Welcoming Jan Waś (578.0s)
- First overview of Faker connector (672.0s)
- Connector documentation, configuration, and details (1077.0s)
- In-depth demo with workflow tips and discussion (1624.0s)
- Summary with Jan and chat about other connectors (4207.0s)
- Recap with Cole and Manfred (4497.0s)
- AI functions question from the audience (4522.0s)
- Next episodes and end of show (4607.0s)
Audio
Hosts
- Manfred Moser, Director/Open Source Engineering at Starburst - @simpligility
- Cole Bowden, Developer Advocate at Firebolt
Guest
Releases
Following are some highlights of the recent releases:
- Add AI functions for textual tasks on data using OpenAI, Anthropic, or other LLMs using Ollama as backend.
- Add support for logging output to the console in JSON format (useful in containers..).
- Support additional Python libraries for use with Python user-defined functions.
- Remove the RPM package.
- Add local file system support.
- Add support for S3 Tables in Iceberg connector.
As always, numerous performance improvements, bug fixes, and other features were added as well.
Our first Trino Gateway release of 2025 shipped, and it is packed with great new features and fixes. Some examples are the following:
- Rules editor in the web interface
- Automatic database schema update and support for Oracle
- Trino cluster monitoring with JMX and OpenMetrics
Introducing Jan Waś
Jan, also known as nineinchnick on GitHub, is a very active Trino contributor with a wide range of his own plugins and projects. He is subproject maintainer for the Helm charts and the Grafana plugin, and is heavily involved in GitHub actions setup and numerous other efforts. Jan resides in Poland. When he is not working on Trino, you can find him at metal, electronics, and even opera concerts across Europe or at home playing video games.
Datafaker, Faker connector, and Trino
We talk about using simulated data from the TPC-H and TPC-DS connectors to learn SQL and use it for other scenarios such as benchmarking, testing for SQL support, and validating other connectors and data sources. This leads us to the limitations of these connectors and how the Faker connector is the next step.
Jan tells us about the Datafaker library and his motivation to create a connector, and how it eventually landed in Trino itself.
Demo time
Jan shows us how to configure the connector and then demoes a number of use cases from learning SQL to populating and testing other data sources.
Resources
- Faker connector documentation
- Datafaker project
- Trino reports repository
- Other project repositories from Jan
- Zero-cost reporting, presented at Trino Fest 2023
Rounding out
Watch the recording of the Trino contributor call or read the minutes.
Join us for upcoming events and let us know if you want to a guest:
- Trino Community Broadcast 72: Keeping the lake clean, all about Lakekeeper
- Trino Community Broadcast 73: Wrapping Trino packages with a bow