State of data catalogs: The battle for your metadata

The blog post provides a comparative analysis of how major platforms like Starburst Galaxy, Databricks, and Snowflake handle data catalogs and table format catalogs, specifically focusing on Apache Iceberg and Delta Lake. Databricks has developed the Unity Catalog, supporting Delta Lake with governance features, while Snowflake has introduced a proprietary Iceberg catalog, currently in private preview, which aims to centralize Iceberg table metadata but has limited openness to external engines. Starburst Galaxy, leveraging the open-source Trino engine, promotes an open ecosystem through its Gravity data catalog, supporting a wide range of data sources and formats, including Delta Lake and Iceberg, without vendor lock-in. The discussion highlights the tension between vendor-controlled metadata ecosystems and more open architectures, underscoring the importance of metadata management in modern data infrastructure strategies.