A detailed breakdown of Apache Iceberg's three-layer architecture: the Catalog Layer (thin pointer to current metadata, enabling atomic commits), the Metadata Layer (metadata files, manifest lists, and manifest files enabling hierarchical query pruning), and the Data Layer (open-format Parquet files in cloud object storage).
Table of contents
2a. Metadata Files (The Root of Each Snapshot)2b. Manifest Lists (The Snapshot Index)2c. Manifest Files (The File Registry)How the Layers Work Together: A Query ExampleSort: