Accelerate queries on Apache Iceberg tables through AWS Glue auto compaction

This article discusses AWS Glue's new automatic compaction feature for Apache Iceberg tables, which helps optimize data lakes by efficiently managing small files and improving query performance for streaming data.

• Auto compaction supports both Copy-on-Write (CoW) and Merge-on-Read (MoR) Iceberg table modes
• The feature continuously monitors table partitions and compacts data and delete files
• Performance tests showed significant improvements in query execution times:
  • Up to 94.31% reduction in query time for count operations
  • 29-51% performance improvement for complex queries
  • Reduced data scanning requirements
• Supports complex data and schema evolution
• Designed to handle high-throughput streaming data scenarios

The solution provides a more efficient way to manage transactional data lakes, reducing metadata overhead and improving overall query performance for organizations dealing with large-scale data ingestion.