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Apache Iceberg

ANALYTICS
Velocity0.0

Open table format for huge analytic datasets with schema evolution

iceberg.apache.org ↗

Iceberg's release cadence is now backports and CVE patches across three live minor lines.

table-formatlakehouserest-catalogbackportsvariant-type
◆Current state
The project is maintaining 1.9.x, 1.10.x and 1.11.x concurrently, and the visible work is overwhelmingly maintenance: dependency bumps, backported fixes, and a steady stream of correctness repairs around nullability, deletes and the REST catalog. 1.10.2 in particular is almost entirely backports plus a CVE fix in a compression dependency.
◆Where it's heading
The feature story lives in the minor releases and the spec, not the patches — Flink 2.0 support, Variant type work reaching Parquet readers, and repeated REST catalog validation fixes point at a format spending its effort on engine breadth and on the REST catalog as the standard access path. The patch stream shows a format mature enough that its hardest problems are now schema-evolution edge cases and cleanup-on-failure semantics.
◆Prediction
Expect continued parallel maintenance of the 1.10.x and 1.11.x lines with backports dominating, and the next substantive work to land in Variant type coverage and REST catalog behaviour rather than in the core table spec.

◆Recent moves

  1. 2mo ago

    1.11.0 opens a new line on Spark 4.0.1

    The new minor line arrives dominated by dependency bumps and build maintenance, with the Spark version moved to 4.0.1 and a schema-evolution spec note reverted. Opening a third live line while 1.10.x still takes backports is the cadence pattern this project now runs on.

    View source ↗
  2. 2mo ago

    Backport release fixes delete ordering and a compression CVE

    A pure backport release: non-deterministic equality-delete schema ordering, snapshot loading that could trigger accidental file cleanup, non-deterministic Flink operator UIDs, and a CVE in the aircompressor dependency. The cleanup-on-failure fixes are the ones that matter — they protect data, not throughput.

    View source ↗
  3. 7mo ago

    Nullability and REST catalog validation fixes

    Fixes required fields nested in optional structs producing nulls, namespace drops that ignored contained views, timestamp-nanos default overflow, and PlanTableScanRequest validation. The concentration on nullability and REST validation shows where the format's remaining sharp edges are.

    View source ↗
  4. 10mo ago

    Flink 2.0 support and Variant type reaches Parquet

    The substantive minor in this window: Flink 2.0 support lands, and Variant gains timestamp-nanos, time and UUID types plus a Parquet array reader. Engine breadth and semi-structured data are where Iceberg is spending, and the subsequent patch stream is largely cleaning up after it.

    View source ↗
  5. 1y ago

    Stop retrying object-store 502 and 504 responses

    A single-change patch that stops retrying on 502 and 504 from object storage. Narrow, but it belongs to the same theme as the newer cleanup fixes: getting failure handling right rather than adding surface.

    View source ↗