Why Apache Iceberg

Why Apache Iceberg:

• Existing data map tools roughly aligned (already using Parquet)
  • Allows for schema elovution which can be used to have an intentially limited v1 and then easily evolve to v2, v3, …xs
• Geo data types are new in Iceberg 3 (which is finalizing in summer of 2025)
  • Based on GeoArrow
  • GeoArrow parser for DeckGL: geoarrow/deck.gl-layers
  • Useful data structures for representing objects on 2D maps
• Web-app context:
  • Very light weight data web-app “stack”
    • icebird and friends
    • icebird + hyparquet = 85kb + 10kb
    • Way lighter than duckDB or lanceDB and their ilk
• Lakehouse context:
  • Iceberg is a widely adopted format for data lakehouse
  • Static files (over HTTP or local file system)
    • DataMapPlot generates static file data map web apps
    • “Lakehouse” is simply a fancy term form static storage (“object store”), plus a little DB machinery
  • As of early 2025, Iceberg Catalog is now available as a mainstream managed service
    • “The R2 Data Catalog in open beta, a managed Apache Iceberg catalog built directly into your Cloudflare R2 bucket.”
    • We can expect the same from all the other cloud providers RSN

Network transport weight of various data stacks:

Of course, just reading tables is not the same complexity of machinery as a SQL engine but perhaps such is overkill…