Franz Wöllert
Hi my name is Franz and I’m an open source and python enthuisiast:
- father of 3 girls
- major in psychology
- chess hobbiyst
- former competitive ultimate frisbee player
- likes cooking and baking sourdough bread
Session
Open table formats have almost freed us from vendor lock-in. They form a critical building block of the modern, composable data stack. The most prominent open table format is Apache Iceberg - not only because of its storage layout, but also due to its REST catalog specification. Iceberg has gained significant traction through a recent stream of feature announcements from the community itself, major cloud providers like AWS, and data platform leaders such as Snowflake and Databricks.
But cutting through the hype: how does Iceberg actually perform in the real world if you are not Netflix or Apple which are capable of Building Your Own Snowflake (BYOS)? Can you realistically migrate from legacy solutions to Iceberg and enjoy all its promises without tradeoffs?
That, of course, is a rhetorical question. Some even argue that Iceberg got parts of the specification fundamentally wrong!?!
Curious? Join me for another episode of Open Table Formats in the Wild™. Expect a practical look at the current state of Apache Iceberg and Apache Parquet, alongside a gentle introduction to DuckLake and Vortex as promising contenders for table and file formats, respectively.