Apache Iceberg Catalog Deep Dive and Demo
Webinar Overview
As Apache Iceberg continues its rapid evolution and the catalog ecosystem expands, data engineers must make pivotal decisions about metadata management that directly influence query performance, costs, and operational complexity. Join this technical deep dive into the current catalog landscape, complete with live implementations, performance comparisons, and insights into leading solutions—including the newly GA'd Polaris v1.0 and emerging innovators reshaping the field.
Agenda
Why Iceberg?
The problems Iceberg solves
Break down its underlying architecture including storage, metadata, and catalog layers.
Why You Need Catalogs?
The limitations of raw Iceberg usage without catalogs
Alongside a live demo
Demo Time- Catalog Setup Differences and Unique Features
Demonstrate setup variations and distinctive features across catalogs,
Glue (enterprise integration and Lake Formation)
Polaris (REST API and multi-engine support),
LakeKeeper (serverless auto-scaling)
Nessie (branching for experimentation)
Ecosystem Update Since February 2025
Review recent developments like Polaris v1.0 going live
Snowflake's write support for multi-cloud, AWS S3 Table enhancements
Nessie retirement plans and migrations
DataHub integration outcomes for business vs. technical catalogs
And, new players entering the space.
Q&A and Conclusion
About the Speaker
Arsham Eslami is Co-Founder of Greybeam, where he builds automated workload routing systems to optimize Snowflake costs and performance.
With extensive experience in data infrastructure automation, Arsham has architected scalable data platforms across multiple startups. His technical expertise spans distributed systems, real-time analytics, and cost optimization for cloud-native data architectures. He is an active contributor to open-source data tooling and infrastructure automation.
Who Should Attend
Data Engineers implementing or migrating Iceberg table formats in production
Platform Engineers evaluating catalog solutions for multi-petabyte data lakes
Data Architects designing metadata management strategies for hybrid cloud environments
DevOps Engineers managing data infrastructure costs and performance optimization
Technical Leaders making vendor selection decisions for lakehouse architectures
If you're passionate about Apache Iceberg and eager to level up your skills in cutting-edge data engineering, this webinar is for you.
Key Takeaways
By the end of this session, you'll gain:
A clear understanding of why Iceberg is essential and how catalogs address its core challenges
Hands-on insights into setting up and differentiating major catalogs with their standout features
Updates on the latest 2025 ecosystem shifts and their implications for your data strategies
Practical guidance on migrations, integrations, and production best practices
Technical Prerequisites
This webinar assumes familiarity with:
Apache Iceberg table format basics and metadata structure
SQL engines (Spark, Trino, or similar) and lakehouse query patterns
Cloud storage systems (S3, GCS, ADLS) and object store performance characteristics
Basic understanding of distributed systems and eventual consistency models
All demonstrations will include configuration examples and performance metrics to enable immediate implementation in your production environments.
Don't miss this opportunity to dive deep into Apache Iceberg's catalog ecosystem with experts from the community. Register now and join fellow data engineers in advancing your Iceberg expertise.