An overview of Delta Lake, Apache Hudi, and Apache Iceberg

The three table formats that we are reviewing in this book all provide similar functionality, as outlined above, but they also all have their own unique features and slightly different implementations. In this section, we are going to do a deep dive into each of the three open table formats.

Deep dive into Delta Lake

Let’s start by looking at Delta Lake; however, we will not be covering the enhanced capabilities available as part of the paid Databricks offering. For example, Delta Live Tables provides ETL pipeline functionality, but is not open-sourced, so is not covered here.

Delta Lake has become a very popular table format, in large part as a result of Databricks having a very popular Lakehouse offering that incorporates Delta Lake. Databricks has made all Delta Lake API’s open-source, including a number of performance optimization features that they initially built for their paying customers...