Overview
Apache Iceberg is an open table format designed for huge analytic datasets. Created at Netflix, it's become the leading open standard for lakehouse tables. Its engine-agnostic design means the same tables work with Spark, Trino, Flink, and increasingly Snowflake and Databricks.
Key Features
- ✓ Engine Agnostic: Works with any compute engine
- ✓ Hidden Partitioning: No partition columns in queries
- ✓ Schema Evolution: Safe schema changes
- ✓ Time Travel: Query historical snapshots
- ✓ Partition Evolution: Change partitioning without rewrite
- ✓ Row-level Updates: Efficient MERGE operations
Pros
- 👍 True open standard (no vendor control)
- 👍 Best multi-engine support
- 👍 Netflix-proven at massive scale
- 👍 Growing adoption across vendors
- 👍 Snowflake and Databricks support
Cons
- 👎 Requires more setup than Delta
- 👎 Ecosystem still maturing
- 👎 No single vendor champion
- 👎 Some features vary by engine
Best For
Teams wanting vendor independence and multi-engine flexibility. The safe bet for long-term data lake strategy.
Founded: 2018 HQ: Apache Software Foundation