Apache Polaris

Apache Polaris is an open-source metadata catalog and data management service designed to manage Apache Iceberg tables in modern data lakehouse environments. It provides a centralized catalog that allows multiple compute engines and analytics systems to interact with the same datasets through a standardized interface. By implementing the Iceberg REST catalog API, Polaris enables distributed data platforms to access shared table metadata without tightly coupling storage systems and query engines. This design allows organizations to run queries on the same Iceberg tables using tools such as Apache Spark, Flink, Trino, and other analytics engines while maintaining consistency across platforms. Polaris also focuses on data governance, security, and interoperability within large-scale cloud data architectures. Because Iceberg tables often exist across many services in a distributed ecosystem, the catalog helps coordinate metadata, schemas, and access policies in a unified system.