idea Support for Apache Iceberg in ArcGIS Notebooks for Large-Scale GIS in ArcGIS Notebooks Ideas

Support for Apache Iceberg in ArcGIS Notebooks for Large-Scale GIS

VenkataKondepati — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 16:52:59 GMT

Description:
I would like to use Apache Iceberg together with ArcGIS Notebooks to perform GIS statistical and spatial analysis on large datasets. Iceberg provides powerful capabilities for handling big data, including:

Schema evolution without breaking existing queries.
Efficient handling of petabyte-scale datasets.
Open table format support for cloud object storage and modern data lakes.

Proposed Enhancement:
Extend ArcGIS tools (ArcGIS Notebooks, ArcGIS Pro, and ArcGIS Enterprise) to integrate with Apache Iceberg as a data source. This could mean:

Direct connections from ArcGIS Notebooks to Iceberg tables (similar to existing connectors for Spark, Snowflake, or BigQuery).
Ability to query Iceberg tables as feature layers.
Support for spatial extensions or joins on Iceberg datasets.

Use Case:
Organizations working with cloud-native data lakes increasingly use Iceberg for analytics and data management. Integrating Iceberg with ArcGIS would allow GIS professionals to run statistical analysis and spatial queries directly on massive datasets without duplicating them into geodatabases.

Benefit:

Unlocks cloud-scale geospatial analytics.
Reduces data duplication between GIS and data science platforms.
Keeps ArcGIS aligned with modern data lakehouse ecosystems (Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi).

Question:
Are there plans to extend Esri tools with Apache Iceberg integration? I’d love to hear other users’ ideas and use cases as well.

Re: Support for Apache Iceberg in ArcGIS Notebooks for Large-Scale GIS

TomPaschke — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 16:24:50 GMT

Hi @VenkataKondepati,

have you tried using DuckDB to connect to Iceberg tables? It's included in the latest Python runtime and could be used to connect to Iceberg tables and turn them into a SeDF for further analysis in the notebook: https://duckdb.org/docs/stable/core_extensions/iceberg/overview

Additionally, Custom Data Feeds could be used to generate a DuckDB based query layer of Iceberg Tables modifying the existing CDF: https://developers.arcgis.com/enterprise-sdk/guide/custom-data-feeds/custom-data-samples/

I unfortunately haven't had the time to try it out myself, yet but this could be a solution until it's supported as cloud data warehouse layer.

Cheers,
Tom

Re: Support for Apache Iceberg in ArcGIS Notebooks for Large-Scale GIS

VenkataKondepati — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 20:21:54 GMT

Hi @TomPaschke,

Thanks for the details. Yes, I tried a little bit with DuckDB, but not extensively.

It is a good workaround until we have support.

Regards,

Venkat