Why it matters

Iceberg increasingly standard for lakehouse. Understanding shapes modern data platform.

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The architecture

Metadata layer: JSON metadata + Avro manifests.

Data: Parquet files.

Iceberg structureMetadataJSON + manifestsSnapshotsimmutable table statesTime travel + rollbackvia snapshotsEvery commit creates new snapshot; enables time travel
Iceberg mechanics.
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How it works end to end

Schema evolution: safe adds, renames, type promotions.

Hidden partitioning: files partitioned but not exposed to query.

Compaction: rewrite small files.

Catalog: Hive, Nessie, AWS Glue.