Getting Started with Apache Iceberg: A Roadmap

Apache Iceberg is gaining popularity as an open-source table format that offers high performance, schema evolution capabilities, and full CRUD support, making it suitable for various workflows, including analytics and AI. While transitioning to Apache Iceberg can seem daunting due to concerns about data migration, maintenance, governance, and training, it is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Organizations can gradually migrate critical workloads by leveraging modern distributed query engines like Trino, which support Iceberg natively, allowing for a flexible approach with selective centralization. Apache Iceberg's metadata utilization supports features like time travel, rollback, and snapshots, making it ideal for modern data platforms with growing, changeable needs. To facilitate adoption, companies should engage stakeholders, address organizational constraints, and establish a maintenance strategy to ensure long-term performance. Starburst Galaxy offers a managed platform to ease the migration process, providing tools that simplify maintenance, automate tasks, and integrate with leading data platforms, thereby minimizing the complexity of adopting Apache Iceberg.