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The Iceberg Open Lakehouse
Learn how open storage and Apache Iceberg become a trustworthy, portable lakehouse.
Open videoIndependent technical reference
An independent resource forthe open lakehouse
Reference material on Apache Iceberg, lakehouse catalogs, the agentic lakehouse, and modern data architecture. It covers what table formats are, how to deploy Apache Polaris, and how to connect query engines to Iceberg tables. Written by a practitioner, free to read.
Not an Apache project. This is a personal site by Alex Merced. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Apache Software Foundation or the Apache Iceberg project, whose official site is iceberg.apache.org.
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Apache Iceberg, from tip to table
A scene-rich musical explainer that turns the metadata tree, open catalogs, interoperable engines, and lakehouse architecture into one visual journey.
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Nine long-form pillar guides that cover the lakehouse stack from the file format up to the agents querying it.
- Pillar guide
Apache Iceberg
Covers the metadata tree, snapshots, hidden partitioning, and the catalog API from end to end.
Read the guide - Deep dive
Iceberg Architecture
How manifest lists, manifest files, and data files fit together at query time.
Read the guide - Catalogs
The REST Catalog
What the Iceberg REST Catalog spec standardizes, and how engines authenticate against it.
Read the guide - Deep dive
Snapshots & Time Travel
Atomic commits, snapshot expiration, rollback, and querying a table as of any point in time.
Read the guide - Deep dive
Schema Evolution
Add, drop, rename, and reorder columns safely, and why Iceberg's field IDs make it work.
Read the guide - Comparison
Iceberg vs Delta Lake vs Hudi
A neutral comparison of the three open table formats across design, features, and ecosystem.
Read the guide - Pillar guide
The Data Lakehouse
What a lakehouse actually is, the layers it is built from, and how it differs from a warehouse.
Read the guide - Agentic AI
The Agentic Lakehouse
Semantic layers, MCP, and the architecture AI agents need to query your data reliably.
Read the guide - Foundations
Open Table Formats
Why table formats exist at all, and the problems they solved for data lakes.
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From the blog
Recent Posts
- 31 MIN READ•Sep 10, 2026
Agentic Data Architecture
A six-layer reference architecture for agents on company data: planners, tool boundaries, identity, the semantic layer, and what breaks when a layer is missing.
Agentic AIdata architecturesemantic layer - 31 MIN READ•Sep 10, 2026
Running Apache Polaris in Production
Apache Polaris past the quickstart: persistence backends, realm bootstrap, replica token signing, upgrades, backups, and which failures take the lakehouse offline.
Apache PolarisApache Icebergcatalogs - 31 MIN READ•Sep 10, 2026
What the 2026 Consolidation Means for Open Formats
Tabular, Dremio, and a wave of data platform acquisitions: what changes for teams building on open formats and which guarantees survive a change of ownership.
open formatsacquisitionsdata platform consolidation - 31 MIN READ•Sep 10, 2026
Context Engineering for Data Agents
Why text-to-SQL accuracy collapses on enterprise schemas, the five kinds of context an agent needs, where each one hides, and how to make the semantics legible.
context engineeringsemantic layertext-to-SQL - 31 MIN READ•Sep 10, 2026
Guardrails for AI on Company Data
The control surfaces that actually contain damage once an agent is fooled: identity, permissions, audit trails, and prompt injection at the query layer.
AI governanceprompt injectionaccess control - 31 MIN READ•Sep 10, 2026
Migrating Into Iceberg Without Moving Data
add_files, snapshot, and migrate compared: the three in-place paths into Iceberg, the reconciliation each requires, the layout traps, and the rollback story.
Apache Icebergmigrationmetadata
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Must reads on Iceberg, agentic AI, and the lakehouse
The Definitive Guide to the Semantic Layer
Understand what a semantic layer is, why it matters for modern data architectures, and how it creates a consistent, governed layer between raw data and business consumers.
Read articleApache Polaris: The Catalog Standard for Lakehouses and AI
A deep dive into Apache Polaris, the open-source catalog that is emerging as the standard for managing Iceberg tables across multi-engine Lakehouses and AI workloads.
Read articleWhat Are Table Formats and Why Were They Needed?
Explore the history and motivations behind open table formats like Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, and Apache Hudi, and why they solved critical problems in big data engineering.
Read articleWhat is Dremio?
An overview of Dremio's Lakehouse platform: how it unifies data access, accelerates queries, and powers self-service analytics across cloud and on-premise sources.
Read articleWhat Apache Iceberg Native Actually Means
Not all Iceberg integrations are equal. This article breaks down what it truly means for a platform to be 'Apache Iceberg native' and why the distinction matters for your architecture.
Read articleOpen Source and the Data Lakehouse
A survey of the open source ecosystem powering modern Data Lakehouses, from Apache Iceberg and Nessie to Apache Arrow and Spark, and how they work together.
Read articleWhat is Agentic Analytics?
How AI agents are changing analytics pipelines by querying data, generating insights, and taking actions on their own, and what that means for the Lakehouse.
Read article
This site is an independent publication by Alex Merced. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Apache Software Foundation or the Apache Iceberg project, whose official home is iceberg.apache.org.