Data lakes are flexible, data warehouses are reliable, and Apache Iceberg tries to give you both at once. David Reger's course covers how it actually does that, and how to use it.
Setting Up a Real Lab
You'll build a local Lakehouse environment using Docker, Spark, and MinIO, then create and manage Iceberg tables directly: defining schemas, writing data with PySpark, and exploring how Iceberg manages metadata.
Core Capabilities
- Schema evolution: adding, renaming, and changing column types without breaking things
- Time travel, for querying past versions of your data
- Iceberg's internal architecture: Parquet files, manifests, snapshots, and catalogs
- Partitioning strategies and query optimization
Across 12 lessons, you'll also use the MinIO UI to see how data and metadata are physically stored, and run analytical SQL queries through PySpark. Iceberg is the same table format adopted by companies like Netflix, Stripe, and Apple to handle exactly these problems at scale.