Why Iceberg + Python is the Future of Open Data Lakes

Iceberg, a technology that's gaining traction in the data engineering community, is being hailed as a revolution due to its ability to address many of the pain points associated with traditional data lakes. It offers ACID transactions, schema evolution that works, and a table format that doesn't lock users into a single vendor. This allows companies like Netflix, Apple, and Adobe to bet on Iceberg early. The technology is also being used by Trino, Snowflake, and BigQuery, further solidifying its position as an inevitable choice for data engineers. By decoupling compute from storage, Iceberg enables AI workloads to run on lightweight engines like DuckDB and Trino, reducing costs and improving efficiency. Additionally, Iceberg provides a structured, versioned memory that ensures AI systems retrieve consistent, historical data for reproducibility and reinforcement learning. With the rise of machine learning and AI, which has forced data to evolve, Iceberg is well-positioned to reshape data engineering by providing a composable, open, and interoperable solution.