The Apache Iceberg Market in the Middle of 2026
A survey of the Apache Iceberg market in July 2026: the state of the specification, platform support, the acquisition wave, the catalog contest, and how.
The archive
Writing, page 16
652 posts on Apache Iceberg, lakehouse architecture, data engineering and applied AI.
The Whole Lakehouse Fits on Your Laptop Now
Consumer hardware, columnar formats, single-node engines, and the Iceberg REST catalog crossed a threshold: a large share of cluster work now runs locally.
Iceberg's Next Version Depends on Decisions Being Made in Parquet
The Iceberg and Parquet specifications are co-evolving. Several of the most consequential Iceberg v4 proposals are waiting on Parquet work.
Building a Lakehouse That Stays Inside the Border
Residency is a storage location. Sovereignty is who can compel access, who operates the systems, and whether you can leave.
Table Maintenance Stopped Being a Product
Iceberg table maintenance commoditized when every platform started shipping it. What the six operations are, what they cost, and the observability you.
The Model Class Enterprise Data Teams Are Not Using Yet
Tabular foundation models perform supervised learning in a single forward pass with no training run.
Three Vendors Are Rebuilding the Path From Transaction to Agent
Databricks, Snowflake, and SAP are closing the gap between operational databases and analytical platforms through acquisition, betting on different layers.
What Zero-Copy Actually Costs
Six architectures share the phrase zero-copy, and they have different costs, failure modes, and governance stories.
The Filters We Build: Scams, Slop, and the Search for Signal, From Radio Ads to AI
How every media era from radio to AI forces humanity to build new cognitive filters, the shield against scams and the sieve for finding signal in an ocean.
The Breakdown of the Open Lakehouse in 2026: Iceberg, Arrow, Polaris, Parquet, and Ossie, and How to Actually Build One
A detailed breakdown of the five Apache projects powering the open lakehouse in 2026, Parquet, Iceberg, Polaris, Arrow, and Ossie, and how to build one.