Bring Your Own Iceberg

Bring Your Own Iceberg (BYOI) refers to scenarios where external systems manage the Iceberg tables and RisingWave connects to them as a client. In this approach, you have existing Iceberg tables (typically created by Spark, Flink, batch ETL jobs, or other systems) and you want RisingWave to read from or write to these tables.

​

When to use Bring Your Own Iceberg

Choose this approach when:

• Existing data lake: You already have Iceberg tables managed by other systems (Spark, Flink, dbt, etc.).
• Multi-system architecture: Multiple applications/engines need to read/write the same Iceberg tables.
• Integration requirements: You need to integrate RisingWave into existing data workflows and pipelines.
• External catalog infrastructure: You have existing catalog services (AWS Glue, JDBC databases, REST catalogs) managing your Iceberg metadata.
• Data lake ingestion: You want to stream processed data from RisingWave into your existing data lake.
• Batch+Stream hybrid: Combining batch processing (other systems) with stream processing (RisingWave) on the same tables.

​

Key capabilities

​

Read from Iceberg tables (Iceberg Source)

Ingest data from existing Iceberg tables into RisingWave for stream processing:

CREATE SOURCE my_iceberg_source
WITH (
    connector = 'iceberg',
    warehouse.path = 's3://my-data-lake/warehouse',
    database.name = 'my_db',
    table.name = 'user_events',
    catalog.type = 'glue',  -- Use AWS Glue as catalog
    s3.access.key = 'your-access-key',
    s3.secret.key = 'your-secret-key',
    s3.region = 'us-west-2'
);

• Streaming ingestion: Continuously read new data as it’s added to the Iceberg table
• Time travel: Read historical snapshots of the data
• Schema evolution: Automatically handle schema changes in the source table

​

Write to Iceberg tables (Iceberg Sink)

Stream processed results from RisingWave into existing Iceberg tables:

CREATE SINK my_iceberg_sink FROM processed_data
WITH (
    connector = 'iceberg',
    warehouse.path = 's3://my-data-lake/warehouse',
    database.name = 'analytics',
    table.name = 'aggregated_metrics',
    catalog.type = 'rest',
    catalog.uri = 'http://my-catalog:8181',
    type = 'upsert',  -- Support both append-only and upsert modes
    s3.access.key = 'your-access-key',
    s3.secret.key = 'your-secret-key'
);

• Multiple sink modes: Append-only or upsert depending on your use case
• Exactly-once delivery: Ensure data consistency with configurable delivery semantics
• External accessibility: Data written by RisingWave is immediately available to other systems

​

Supported catalog types

BYOI works with various external catalog systems:

• AWS Glue: Managed metadata service on AWS
• JDBC catalogs: PostgreSQL, MySQL, or other JDBC-compatible databases storing metadata
• REST catalogs: RESTful catalog services including AWS S3 Tables
• Storage catalogs: Direct filesystem-based metadata (S3/HDFS)
• Hive Metastore: Traditional Hadoop ecosystem catalog
• Snowflake: Snowflake-managed Iceberg catalogs

​

Architecture patterns

​

Lambda/Kappa architecture

• Batch layer: Spark/Flink writes to Iceberg tables.
• Speed layer: RisingWave reads from Iceberg (batch results) and streams real-time updates.
• Serving layer: Analytics tools query the combined results.

​

Multi-engine data lake

• Multiple writers: Different systems write to the same Iceberg tables.
• Multiple readers: Various engines read from shared tables.
• RisingWave role: Provides real-time streaming capabilities to the data lake.

​

ETL/ELT pipelines

• Extract: RisingWave reads from various sources.
• Transform: Stream processing in RisingWave.
• Load: Write results to existing data lake via Iceberg sink.

​

What’s included in this section

• Read from Iceberg: Complete guide to creating Iceberg sources for data ingestion.
• Write to Iceberg: Complete guide to creating Iceberg sinks for data export.
• Catalog Configuration: Setup and configuration for external catalog systems.
• Object Storage Configuration: Configuration for S3, GCS, and Azure Blob storage.

​

Next steps

1. Identify your catalog: Determine what catalog system manages your existing Iceberg tables.
2. Start with reading: Create an Iceberg source to ingest existing data.
3. Add streaming outputs: Set up Iceberg sinks to export processed results.
4. Configure catalogs: Review catalog configuration for your specific setup.

Comparing approaches: If you want RisingWave to create and manage Iceberg tables directly, see RisingWave Managed Iceberg instead.