REST catalog specification
Iceberg has introduced a REST-based Catalog API to manage table metadata and execute catalog operations. The OpenAPI specification for this REST Catalog API is available at the REST Catalog OpenAPI YAML. Users can also interact with the API through the Swagger UI. As the Iceberg project expanded to accommodate more languages and engines, the implementation of catalogs in multiple languages posed challenges for commercial offerings.
These challenges included supporting various catalogs and clients. To address compatibility issues and facilitate future enhancements, the Iceberg community developed the REST catalog protocol. This protocol functions as a standardized API, utilizing the OpenAPI specification, for interacting with any Iceberg catalog. The REST protocol holds significance for several reasons.
It allows the usage of the REST catalog protocol with built-in catalogs through translation in the CatalogHandlers class, or by leveraging the open-source iceberg-rest-fixture docker image.
Written by urgent.news from Ananth Packkildurai from Data Engineering Weekly's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
