Apache Polaris #

Apache Polaris is an open-source REST catalog for Apache Iceberg. It implements Iceberg’s open REST API for interoperability from multiple compute engines, including Starburst Enterprise platform (SEP), Starburst Galaxy, and Trino. This allows these compute engines to read and write to the same Iceberg tables while also providing an additional shared access control layer.

Apache Iceberg is a table format for managing data and metadata files of a table. The role of a catalog for Iceberg is to track the latest metadata file path by name, so an engine such as Trino can read and write to the table by name using SQL. In addition, it lets SEP, Galaxy, and Trino perform other actions such as creating, dropping, and renaming Iceberg tables.

In addition to Polaris, many other catalogs support Iceberg tables including the Starburst Galaxy metastore, Hive metastore, AWS Glue, and Nessie. The interoperability of these catalogs with other engines may vary.

Iceberg REST catalog #

The Iceberg REST catalog was introduced in Iceberg 0.14.0 to provide more specificity of how an Iceberg catalog should be implemented. A REST catalog can be implemented in any language, whether proprietary or open source, as long as it adheres to the Iceberg REST Open API specification. As the REST catalog has become the standardized catalog protocol, more open-source and commercial catalogs are becoming compatible with the specification. Polaris is the latest implementation of a REST catalog.

Apache Polaris is supported in Starburst Enterprise, Starburst Galaxy, and Trino. Get started in Galaxy or SEP.