Apache Polaris
Polaris is an open-source, cloud-native catalog service designed to manage Apache Iceberg™ catalogs efficiently. Integrated with e6data, Polaris enables users to query structured and semi-structured data across cloud data lakes using a unified, secure interface. It supports schema evolution, nested namespaces, and metadata access through the Apache Iceberg REST protocol, making it a robust choice for large-scale, production-grade lakehouse environments.
Key Benefits:
Unified Metadata Access: Centrally view and query all registered Iceberg datasets, regardless of where they are stored (e.g., S3, Azure, or GCS).
Enterprise-Grade Security: Implements fine-grained role-based access control (RBAC) for secure and compliant data access.
Scalable Architecture: Designed to handle large-scale data catalogs, partitions, and workloads across enterprise-grade deployments.
Multi-Cloud Compatibility: Supports storage backends across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
Interoperability with Compute Engines: Seamlessly integrates with engines like Apache Spark, Flink, Dremio, and Snowflake for read operations.
Support for Views: Along with tables, Polaris supports virtualized views to simplify querying and data abstraction.
Rich Namespace Support: Allows nested namespaces up to 16 levels deep for granular organization of data assets.
Use Cases:
Centralized cataloging of data across departments or business units
Managing logical namespaces for better data organization
Secure access to structured data across cloud platforms
Seamless integration with data processing and analytics engines.
What Is Supported:
Catalog and schema discovery
Multi-level namespaces
Role-based access mapping
Cloud-native compatibility (AWS, Azure, GCP)
Access to schema, table, column metadata, statistics, and partitions
Future Improvements:
Currently supports read-only operations
Only catalog-level access control is available
Fine-grained access (e.g., per-table or per-column) is planned for future releases
Validating catalogs with different principal roles
Sample Queries:
-- List all tables in a Polaris namespace
SHOW TABLES FROM polaris_catalog.sales.q3;
-- Query a table through Polaris catalog
SELECT customer_id, total_amount
FROM polaris_catalog.sales.q3.orders
WHERE total_amount > 1000;Troubleshooting:
Connection fails
Ensure Polaris URL and Client ID are correct
Tables or schemas missing
Verify role privileges and catalog configurations
Access errors (401/403)
Check with your Polaris admin to confirm access permissions
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