Trino on Ice II: In-Place Table Evolution and Cloud Compatibility with Iceberg

The blog post in the "Trino on Ice" series highlights the benefits of using Apache Iceberg with the Trino query engine, focusing on in-place table evolution and cloud compatibility. It contrasts Iceberg's capabilities with those of Hive, emphasizing Iceberg's advantages in partition specification and schema evolution without requiring table migrations. This flexibility allows users to change partition granularity seamlessly and manage schema changes without data loss or errors, unlike Hive. The post also discusses Iceberg's design for cloud storage, explaining how it efficiently handles data queries and avoids performance issues associated with object storage systems like S3 or Azure Blob storage by tracking data at the file level rather than the partition level. This results in better query performance and consistency, especially in cloud environments. The post encourages readers to explore Iceberg's offerings further, suggesting documentation for those using Trino or Starburst Enterprise.