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

***

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

--
PyData is a group for users and developers of data analysis tools to share ideas and learn from each other. We gather to discuss how best to apply Python tools, as well as those using R and Julia, to meet the evolving challenges in data management, processing, analytics, and visualization. PyData is organized by NumFOCUS.org, a 501(c)3 non-profit in the United States.

The PyData ​Code of Conduct​ governs this meetup. To discuss any issues or concerns relating to the code of conduct or the behavior of anyone at a PyData meetup, please contact the organizer or NumFOCUS Executive Director Leah Silen (+1512-222-5449; leah@numfocus.org).

Our Facebook group you can find here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1813599648877946/

Our Twitter account here: https://twitter.com/PyDataBA

Our LinkedIn group here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13506080

***

R <- Slovakia (#RSlovakia) is sub-group of PyData Slovakia (#PyDataSK) & Bratislava (#PyDataBA) and an active place for discussion between R Enthusiasts and Users, Data Scientists, Economists and Statisticians of all levels in Slovakia using R for data analysis and data visualization. Powered by NumFOCUS, The R Foundation & GapData Institute.
The goals are to build R community in Slovakia and to provide R enthusiasts a place to share ideas and learn from each other about how best to apply R to ever-evolving challenges in the vast realm of data analytics, management, processing and visualization.
We share here interesting articles, links to books or work of others in R you find elsewhere, asking questions you have while working on an R project/visualization, as well as presenting results of your own work in R.
On LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13503959
On Twitter you can follow us here: https://twitter.com/PyDataBA/

Organizers:
GapData Institute (https://www.gapdata.org/) (GDI) is a nonprofit nonpartisan research institution harnessing power of data & wisdom of economics for public good.

|| Data. Think. Change. ||

NumFOCUS (http://www.numfocus.org/) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that supports and promotes world-class, innovative, open source scientific computing. The mission of NumFOCUS is to promote sustainable high-level programming languages, open code development, and reproducible scientific research.