The Iceberg ecosystem today (w/ Anders Swanson)

The Iceberg ecosystem today (w/ Anders Swanson)

From The Analytics Engineering Podcast by dbt Labs, Inc.

March 8, 2026 · 55 min

About this episode

Tristan discusses the current state of the Apache Iceberg ecosystem with Anders Swanson.

Tristan sits down with Anders Swanson, a developer experience advocate at dbt Labs, to talk about the state of the Apache Iceberg ecosystem. They unpack the "open standards" shift, define the core building blocks (query engines, object stores, catalogs), and dig into why external catalogs have become a fourth namespace tier across platforms. Anders outlines a pragmatic, phased adoption model for Iceberg integrations, explains why metadata performance and resiliency are hard requirements, and clarifies why vended credentials exist and what they solve. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com . The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

People in this episode

Host: Tristan

Guest: Anders Swanson

Topics covered

  • Apache Iceberg
  • open standards
  • metadata performance
  • data integration
  • developer experience

Keywords

  • Apache Iceberg
  • open standards
  • metadata
  • data integration
  • developer experience
  • vended credentials

Sponsors

dbt Labs

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Apache Iceberg

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