Amazon S3 Tables now support all Apache Iceberg V3 data types

What changed

Amazon S3 Tables now support all data types in the Apache Iceberg V3 specification. You can create V3 tables or upgrade existing V2 tables to take advantage of V3 features like deletion vectors, row lineage, and new data types such as variant, nanosecond timestamps, unknown, geometry, and geography.

Price and bundle value

Apache Iceberg has become the open standard for managing large analytics datasets. It lets you manage petabyte-scale tables with features like schema evolution, hidden partitioning, and time travel queries, while keeping your data in open Parquet files in data lakes on object storage like Amazon S3 . Amazon S3 Tables offer storage purpose-built to keep Iceberg tables performant and cost-effective as they grow, with fully managed features like automatic compaction, maintenance, replication, and Intelligent-Tiering.

AI features that change the value

Starting today, Amazon S3 Tables support all V3 data types, including variant, nanosecond timestamps, geometry, geography, and unknown, along with deletion vectors and row lineage. You can create new V3 tables or upgrade existing V2 tables in place, and S3 Tables continue to run compaction and maintenance for you.

Who should pay attention

Apache Iceberg V3 V3 is the latest version of the Iceberg specification . Among its many improvements, V3 introduces capabilities that address the most common pain points in V2. This includes:.

Patrick Tech Media take

Deletion vectors replace V2’s positional delete files with a compact binary format. That 50,000-row compliance delete now writes a single deletion vector file instead of thousands of small deletes, significantly reducing compaction time and delete file overhead.

Source notes

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