Overview

Immuta connects to Starburst (Trino) as a plugin integration. This allows Immuta to apply policies directly in Starburst (Trino) without data flowing through a proxy. Users can work with their existing tools (querying, reporting, etc.) and have per-user policies applied into views at query time.

Architecture

Once the plugin has been pushed out to all nodes, administrators create an immuta catalog that is managed by the custom Immuta Trino connector that generates the list of available schemas and views at query time based on the user making the request. When a user executes a query against one of the Immuta views, the connector dynamically generates the view definition and provides that to the Trino execution engine, which then connects to the backing catalogs and retrieves the data with appropriate policy enforcement.

Policy Enforcement

This integration uses an immuta-trino plugin to create policy-enforced view definitions that users access through an immuta catalog. (Note that even though the plugin is named immuta-trino it works and comes pre-installed with Starburst Enterprise.) When Starburst (Trino) tables are registered in Immuta as data sources, these data sources are dynamically generated as views in the immuta catalog on the Starburst (Trino) node. Then, users subscribed to those data sources in Immuta query the corresponding protected views in Starburst (Trino).

Changes to policies, user attributes, or data sources registered in Immuta trigger webhooks that keep these views up-to-date, empowering users to query policy-enforced data.

Data Flow

1. An Immuta Application Administrator configures the Starburst (Trino) integration, creating an Immuta catalog and connector on their Starburst (Trino) node.

2. Immuta creates a catalog inside the configured Starburst (Trino) node.

3. A Data Owner registers Starburst (Trino) tables in Immuta as data sources. A Data Owner, Data Governor, or Administrator creates or changes a policy or user in Immuta.

4. Data source metadata, tags, user metadata, and policy definitions are stored in Immuta's Metadata Database.

5. The Immuta connector generates and provides the view definition to the Trino Execution Engine.

6. A Starburst (Trino) user who is subscribed to the data source in Immuta queries the corresponding table directly in Starburst (Trino) through the immuta database.

7. Using the querying user's project, purpose, and entitlements, Immuta applies policies to the views at query time, so the user sees policy-enforced data.

Feature Availability

Requirement

Starburst: A valid Starburst Enterprise license

Authentication Methods

The Starburst (Trino) integration supports the following authentication methods to create data sources in Immuta:

• Username and password: You can authenticate with your Starburst (Trino) username and password.

• OAuth 2.0: You can authenticate with OAuth 2.0. Immuta's OAuth authentication method uses the Client Credentials Flow; when you register a data source, Immuta reaches out to your OAuth server to generate a JSON web token (JWT) and then passes that token to the Starburst (Trino) cluster.

OAuth Authentication for Creating Data Sources

When users query a Starburst (Trino) data source, Immuta sends a username with the view SQL so that policies apply in the right context. Since OAuth authentication does not require a username to be associated with a data source upon data source creation, Immuta does not send a username and Starburst (Trino) queries fail. To avoid this error, you must configure a global admin username.

If you are using OAuth or asynchronous authentication to create Starburst (Trino) data sources, see the Starburst (Trino) configuration guide to set the globalAdminUsername property in the advanced configuration section of the Immuta app settings page.

Tag Ingestion

The Starburst (Trino) integration cannot ingest tags from Trino or Starburst, but you can connect any of these supported external catalogs to work with your integration.

User Impersonation

Native impersonation allows users to natively query data as another Immuta user. To enable native user impersonation, see the Integration User Impersonation page.

Native Query Audit

When the Trino Event Listener is enabled during the installation, Immuta can translate those events into comprehensive audit logs for users with the Immuta AUDIT permission to view. For more information about what is included in those audit logs, see the Starburst (Trino) Audit Logs page.

Multiple Starburst (Trino) Integrations

You can configure multiple Starburst (Trino) integrations v2.0 with a single Immuta tenant and use them dynamically. Configure the integration once in Immuta to use it in multiple Starburst or Trino clusters. However, consider the following limitations:

• Names of catalogs cannot overlap because Immuta cannot distinguish among them.

• Only one cluster type is supported: You can connect either Starburst or Trino clusters. These cluster types are not supported together in a single Immuta tenant.

Limitations

• Certain interpolation functions can block the creation of a native view, specifically @interpolatedComparison() and @iam.

• Trino supports an optional anonymous (no authentication) access, which is not supported through Immuta because Immuta ties the Trino user account to the Immuta user account to correctly apply policies. If your organization allows anonymous access, you will not be able to use this integration.

• Limit your masked joins to columns with matching column types. Starburst truncates the result of the masking expression to conform to the native column type when performing the join, so joining two masked columns with different data types produces invalid results when one of the columns' lengths is less than the length of the masked value.

  For example, if the value of a hashed column is 64 characters, joining a hashed varchar(50) and a hashed varchar(255) column will not be joined correctly, since the varchar(50) value is truncated and doesn’t match the varchar(255) value.