AWS Glue Data Catalog began supporting table optimization strategies like binpack, sort, and z-order for V3 tables, enabling compaction to improve query efficiency and reduce storage usage. These optimizations also handle expired snapshots and orphaned files, supporting new V3 data types including variant, geospatial, and high-precision timestamps.
Additionally, Glue now generates number of distinct values (NDV) statistics for V3 tables, facilitating query planning by analytics engines. Glue crawlers can automatically discover V3 tables stored in Amazon S3 and register them in the catalog for querying across compatible engines. These capabilities are available in all AWS Regions with Glue table optimization support.
Source & further reading
AWS Glue Data Catalog now supports table optimization, statistics, and crawlers for Apache Iceberg V3 ↗Source published 2026-10-01. This report was prepared with AI assistance from the linked primary-source material. Claims and limitations should be checked against the original announcement or research.