Third-generation ODBC Driver

Qubole has released a new ODBC driver version (referred to as the third-generation ODBC driver).

It supports two modes:

  • QDS Bypass mode: It is the default mode on the third-generation ODBC driver. The QDS BYPASS configuration property controls it. In this mode, only the Presto engine is supported. This setting allows the ODBC driver to communicate directly with the Presto coordinator for submitting commands and fetching results. In this mode, the ODBC driver provides the following benefits:

    • It is designed to deliver much faster performance than the previous generation drivers. Third-generation drivers can deliver upto 60-70% improvement in latency for simple SELECT queries and around 27% improvement, on an average in runtime of larger complex workloads such as TPCDS benchmarks.

    • The third-generation driver comes with enhanced security through HTTPS and user authentication (through API token).

Note

ODBC driver 3.0 for Mac only supports the QDS Bypass mode.

  • Legacy mode: This is the other mode and the behavior is identical to previous ODBC driver versions (version 2.1.1 and earlier). You can enable the legacy mode by turning off/disabling QDS_BYPASS (on Linux/Mac) or Bypass QDS (on Windows).

The third-generation ODBC driver retains some of the other benefits of previous generation ODBC drivers such as:

  • The query history is available in the QDS Analyze/Workbench page. The Show on UI (on Windows) or SHOW_ON_UI (on Linux/Mac) property controls the query history.

  • Qubole ODBC drivers support cluster lifecycle management (CLCM) (that is cluster start/stop). The cluster does not have to be running all the time. Idle clusters are terminated by the Qubole Control Plane and queries executed through the Qubole ODBC driver bring the cluster up.

In addition, the third-generation driver differs from previous versions in the following ways:

  • It does not store query results on the cloud object storage.

  • Commands are visible on the Analyze/Workbench UI only after the query completion.

  • It does not allow submitting batched queries but it only allows submitting single queries.

  • Currently, this version of the driver only supports Presto in the QDS Bypass mode. You must set the data source name/type (DSI/DST) to presto and the cluster label to that of a Presto cluster.

  • As it communicates directly to the Presto coordinator on the cluster, it requires additional setup as described in Required Setup for Third-generation ODBC Driver.