Databricks, a Data and AI company, announced it has agreed to acquire Tabular, a data management company founded by Ryan Blue, Daniel Weeks, and Jason Reid. By bringing together the original creators of Apache Iceberg and Linux Foundation Delta Lake, the two leading open source lakehouse formats, organizations are no longer limited by which of these formats their data is in. Databricks intends to work closely with the Delta Lake and Iceberg communities to bring format compatibility to the lakehouse; in the short term, inside Delta Lake UniForm and in the long term, by evolving toward a single, open, and common standard of interoperability. Databricks and Tabular will work together towards a joint vision of the open lakehouse.
Databricks will work with the Delta Lake and Iceberg communities to bring data interoperability to the formats over time. This is a long journey, one that will likely take several years to achieve in those communities. That is why last year, Databricks introduced Delta Lake UniForm. UniForm tables provide interoperability across Delta Lake, Iceberg, and Hudi, and support the Iceberg restful catalog interface so companies can use the analytics engines and tools they are already familiar with.
