Decide whether a new table needs an open table format like Iceberg

The vendor pitch says never worry about lock-in again, and I need to know if that's actually true for this table.

AdvancedRead 9 minDoing: half a day, spread across the conversations you need to have6 steps

▶ Start

What you'll have at the end

A written recommendation, Iceberg or native, backed by the table's real size and who else needs to read it

Before you start

You need

A new table you're about to create, plus enough standing to ask other teams whether they plan to query it directly.

Not covered

Comparing Iceberg against Delta Lake or Hudi once you've decided you need an open format, and migrating a table that already has real consumers depending on it today.

Leans on

6 steps

Where to go next

Diagnose a slow warehouse dashboard and fix it with partitioning

If the real pain is today's query speed rather than a future format decision, that fix is cheaper and faster than this whole analysis.

Checked 25 Aug 2026

Part of the Data Warehousing cookbook