Integrate Apache Iceberg with RisingWave

Learn how to integrate Apache Iceberg with RisingWave to unify real-time data processing and data lake storage. Explore how to create and manage Iceberg tables in RisingWave, and how to connect RisingWave to Iceberg tables managed by external systems.

RisingWave supports two integration modes with Apache Iceberg: RisingWave-managed Iceberg tables (often called internal Iceberg tables in this documentation) and externally managed Iceberg tables.

In RisingWave-managed Iceberg tables, RisingWave manages the entire lifecycle of the Iceberg tables, including the catalog, compaction, and ingestion processes. RisingWave provides a PostgreSQL-compatible interface for accessing Iceberg data and ensures interoperability with all major query engines. This mode offers the simplest way to build a Medallion architecture.

In externally managed Iceberg tables, RisingWave connects to Iceberg tables managed by external systems. RisingWave can both read from and write to these tables, enabling seamless data exchange across different environments.

RisingWave in a medallion architecture

RisingWave bridges real-time streaming systems with Iceberg-based data lakes.

It acts as the continuous ingestion and transformation layer in a Medallion architecture, where data flows from raw sources into refined, query-ready Iceberg tables through incremental computation and cascading materialized views.

Next steps

• Learn more about the internal Iceberg tables and external Iceberg tables.
• Create and manage internal Iceberg tables
• Ingest data from Iceberg tables
• Deliver to Iceberg tables