Stop Flattening Your JSON: How Iceberg Variant Changes Semi-Structured Analytics
August 24, 2026Iceberg Variant stores JSON as navigable binary with shredding for columnar filters. Why flattening wide tables is no longer the only performance path.
Iceberg Variant stores JSON as navigable binary with shredding for columnar filters. Why flattening wide tables is no longer the only performance path.
Variant shredding turns messy JSON into Parquet columns with statistics. How the layout works, how readers reassemble values, and why some queries prune.
How Iceberg V3's Variant type and Parquet shredding turn JSON columns into prunable typed columns, with real benchmark tradeoffs and a migration path.