Traditionally, accessing data in data lakes like Apache Iceberg and Parquet required ETL pipelines to duplicate data into databases, increasing cost and complexity. Aurora PostgreSQL’s new capability allows users to create foreign tables that directly reference external Iceberg or Parquet datasets stored in S3 or cataloged via AWS Glue, without data movement.
Queries to these foreign tables leverage embedded DuckDB for efficient execution, maintaining the standard PostgreSQL interface for applications and BI tools. The feature also supports federated querying across compatible catalogs and the option to materialize external data into native Aurora tables for latency-sensitive use cases, generally available across AWS Regions without extra charge.
Source & further reading
Aurora PostgreSQL now supports querying of Apache Iceberg and Parquet data ↗Source published 2026-09-30. 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.