May Meetup @ Xempus: Analytics Data Stack, Dremio and Polaris

Join us for an evening focused on the modern data lakehouse ecosystem, featuring deep dives into Dremio, Apache Iceberg, and emerging technologies shaping open, scalable analytics platforms. Whether you're building data infrastructure, designing governance models, or enabling self-service analytics, this event will offer technical insights into how lakehouse architectures are evolving to support performance, interoperability, and real-world production needs.

📍 Venue: Xempus AG, Arnulfstraße 126, 80636 München
📅 Date & Time: May 13, doors open at 18:30
🍕 As always, pizza and networking are included!

Our Speakers

🗣 Alex Merced: How Dremio and Iceberg Enable the ‘Intelligent Data Lakehouse

This talk explores how Dremio and Apache Iceberg work together to build an efficient and scalable data lakehouse that delivers warehouse-like performance while maintaining open standards and interoperability.
Key topics include:

• Apache Arrow and its role in optimizing query execution and data transfer, enabling high-performance analytics on large datasets.
• Apache Iceberg as the foundation for transactional data lakes, providing schema evolution, ACID compliance, and efficient data pruning.
• Dremio Reflections as an Iceberg-based acceleration layer, reducing query latency by materializing optimized views of data without traditional ETL overhead.
• Federation and autonomous data management, allowing Dremio to query and optimize Iceberg tables alongside relational databases, object storage, and other sources.
• Deployment considerations for platform engineers (Kubernetes-native architecture), data engineers (simplified data curation and governance), and analysts (self-service analytics with governed data products).

By combining Apache Arrow, Iceberg, and Dremio’s query engine, this talk will demonstrate how to achieve low-latency analytics on an open data lake, avoid vendor lock-in, and create a scalable, AI-ready data platform. Expect a technical deep dive into the underlying components, real-world use cases, and best practices for implementing an intelligent Iceberg-based lakehouse.

🗣 Jean-Baptiste Onofré: Apache Polaris: Building a Standard Catalog for the Iceberg Lakehouse Era

In this talk, we'll explore Apache Polaris (incubating), an exciting open source project designed to establish a standard lakehouse catalog for modern data architectures built on Apache Iceberg. We'll begin with an introduction to Apache Iceberg and how it's transforming data lakes into more reliable and performant lakehouses. Then we'll dive into the REST catalog specification that enables interoperability across platforms. The core of our discussion will focus on Polaris itself - its architecture, key features, and how it addresses critical governance challenges in the lakehouse ecosystem. We'll examine Polaris' community-driven governance model and conclude with a roadmap of upcoming features and integration opportunities. Whether you're a data engineer, architect, or platform owner, you'll leave with a clear understanding of how Polaris is working to create a unified catalog standard in the rapidly evolving lakehouse landscape.

🎤 Agenda:

🔹 18:30 p.m.: Doors open
🔹 18:40 - 18:45 p.m.: Welcome by our hosts
🔹 18:45 - 19:30 p.m.: First Talk
🔹 19:30 - 20:00 p.m.: Pizza Break 🍕
🔹 20:00 - 20:45 p.m.: Second Talk