findinpath commented on a change in pull request #3432: URL: https://github.com/apache/iceberg/pull/3432#discussion_r794513070
########## File path: site/docs/row-level-deletes.md ########## @@ -0,0 +1,190 @@ +<!-- + - Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more + - contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with + - this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. + - The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 + - (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with + - the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at + - + - http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 + - + - Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software + - distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, + - WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. + - See the License for the specific language governing permissions and + - limitations under the License. + --> + +# Row-Level Deletes + +Iceberg supports metadata-based deletion through the `DeleteFiles` interface. +It allows you to quickly delete a specific file or any file that might match a given expression without the need to read or write any data in the table. + +Row-level deletes target more complicated use cases such as general data protection regulation (GDPR). +Copy-on-write and merge-on-read are two different approaches to handle row-level delete operations. Here are their definitions in Iceberg: + +- **copy-on-write**: a delete directly rewrites all the affected data files. +- **merge-on-read**: delete information is encoded in the form of _delete files_. The table reader can apply all delete information at read time. Review comment: Does this mean that *each* time while performing a read operation, the reader needs to apply the delete information in order to get the current content of the table? -- 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]
