yangshangqing95 opened a new issue, #17132: URL: https://github.com/apache/iceberg/issues/17132
### Feature Request / Improvement ### Feature request Iceberg exposes many useful metadata tables, such as `files`, `data_files`, `delete_files`, `manifests`, `snapshots`, `history`, `metadata_log_entries`, `refs`, and others. I would like to propose adding a new metadata table that lists the metadata tables available for a given Iceberg table. ### Motivation / use case Metadata tables are useful for debugging, observability, table maintenance, and understanding Iceberg table internals. For example, users can inspect files, manifests, snapshots, refs, and metadata log entries directly through SQL. However, users currently need to know these metadata table names ahead of time from documentation, examples, or source code. It would be helpful to make metadata tables self-discoverable from SQL. A self-describing metadata table would make Iceberg metadata easier to explore without adding engine-specific SQL syntax such as: ```sql SHOW METADATA TABLES FOR catalog.db.table; ``` Instead, this would reuse Iceberg's existing metadata table model. For example, in Spark: ```sql SELECT * FROM catalog.db.table.metadata_tables; ``` Excepted output: ``` entries files data_files delete_files history metadata_log_entries snapshots refs manifests partitions all_data_files all_delete_files all_files all_manifests all_entries position_deletes metadata_tables ``` ### Query engine Spark ### Willingness to contribute - [x] I can contribute this improvement/feature independently - [ ] I would be willing to contribute this improvement/feature with guidance from the Iceberg community - [ ] I cannot contribute this improvement/feature at this time -- This is an automated message from the Apache Git Service. To respond to the message, please log on to GitHub and use the URL above to go to the specific comment. To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For queries about this service, please contact Infrastructure at: [email protected] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
