PyData Slovakia #31 & R<-Slovakia Meetup [Viktor Kessler: Apache Iceberg]

Talk Title: "Governing the Lakehouse: Metadata-Driven Control with Apache Iceberg Catalogs"

Description: Apache Iceberg has redefined how data is stored and queried in modern lakehouses by introducing a table format that supports ACID transactions, time travel, and schema evolution. At the heart of this transformation lies the Iceberg Catalog—a critical component that manages table metadata and connects distributed storage systems with compute engines.

Catalogs play a central role in enabling metadata-driven governance, allowing data teams to enforce consistency, traceability, and access control at scale. In this session, we explore how Iceberg’s metadata model empowers key governance capabilities such as auditability, reproducibility, multi-engine interoperability, and simplified lineage tracking.
But while Iceberg provides a solid foundation, essential governance features are still emerging. We'll examine what’s missing today: fine-grained policy enforcement, unified access control, real-time metadata observability, and first-class support for data contracts. As Iceberg adoption grows, evolving the catalog layer will be key to achieving enterprise-grade governance in open lakehouse architectures.

Speaker/Bio: Viktor Kessler
Viktor Kessler | Co-Founder @ Vakamo https://www.linkedin.com/in/viktor-kessler/ & vakamo.com +
docs.lakekeeper.io

Open lakehouse ecosystems need more than raw power — they need governance, compatibility and freedom to evolve.

In this forward-thinking session, Viktor Kessler, Co-Founder of Vakamo, breaks down the REST Catalog API of Apache Iceberg. You’ll also meet Lakekeeper, an open-source solution extending the REST standard with metadata-driven policy enforcement.

After Viktor's main talk (45-60 min) there will be about 1,5 hour long R <- Slovakia / R User Group (sub-group of PyData Slovakia) meetup afterwards.

Language of the event: English

Moderator and Host of the event:
Radovan Kavický, President & Principal Data Scientist @ GapData Institute; former AI & Data Science Evangelist @ AIslovakIA - National platform for AI development in Slovakia

Registration:

@Meetup.com group's event here (https://www.meetup.com/pydata-slovakia-bratislava/events/307510355/) & @Eventbrite registration here (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pydata-slovakia-meetup-30-maryam-alimardani-navigating-the-phd-journey-tickets-1341011775319?aff=oddtdtcreator). +our event you can find also @Facebook here (https://www.facebook.com/events/1823801225067220) and LinkedIn here (https://www.linkedin.com/events/7337730825595072513/about/).

[Disclaimer: If you just mark "going" @Facebook event we can't guarantee your seat]

Language of the event: English

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PyData Bratislava [Python Data Enthusiasts and Users, Data Scientists & Statisticians of all levels from Slovakia]