AWS Glue Data Catalog now supports maintenance, statistics and discovery tools for Apache Iceberg V3 tables, giving data teams more ways to improve query performance and control storage costs. The update also supports V3 data types including geospatial values and nanosecond-precision timestamps.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
AWS says Glue can now compact Iceberg V3 tables using binpack, sort or z-order strategies, remove expired snapshots and orphan files, and generate distinct-value statistics to help analytics engines plan queries. Glue crawlers can also discover V3 tables in Amazon S3 and register them in the Glue Data Catalog for use with compatible query engines.
The features are available in the AWS Regions where the corresponding Glue Data Catalog optimization, statistics and crawler capabilities are offered. Read AWS’s announcement.
Why it matters
Iceberg V3 brings newer data types, but support for a format is only part of the job. Tables still need maintaining, useful statistics and a route into the catalogue that makes them discoverable. These additions address those practical chores: compaction and cleanup can help manage query performance and storage, while crawlers reduce the manual work of registering tables.
For teams working with location data or fine-grained event times, AWS specifically names geospatial fields and nanosecond-precision timestamps among the supported V3 types. The announcement describes available capabilities, not measured gains, so the size of any performance or cost improvement will depend on the tables and workloads involved.
Our read
This is a useful infrastructure update, not a reason to expect every Iceberg query to suddenly sprint. Its appeal is the combination: maintain the tables, produce statistics and make them discoverable without treating each step as a separate project. Teams using Iceberg V3 should check whether their Regions and query engines line up with the new support before changing workflows.
What to watch
- Which AWS Regions support each of the three Glue capabilities.
- How the optimization options perform on real V3 tables and workloads.
- Which analytics engines make practical use of the generated statistics.
Discussion spark: For teams adopting Iceberg V3, which matters more: automated table maintenance, better query-planning statistics, or simpler discovery in the catalogue?
Sources and evidence
- AWS Glue Data Catalog now supports table optimization, statistics, and crawlers for Apache Iceberg V3 (1 October 2026, 08:00 UTC)
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