iceberg-meta 0.2.3

CLI tool for exploring Apache Iceberg table metadata

iceberg-meta

CLI and TUI for exploring Apache Iceberg table metadata. Inspect snapshots, schemas, manifests, data files, partition health, and column-level statistics -- without Spark or notebooks.

Install

pip install iceberg-meta

Try it instantly

No config, no Docker, no credentials:

iceberg-meta demo

Creates a temporary catalog with sample tables, launches the TUI, and cleans up on exit.

Quick Start

Connect to your data:

iceberg-meta init              # interactive config setup
iceberg-meta doctor            # verify config + connectivity
iceberg-meta list-tables       # explore
iceberg-meta tui               # interactive browser

Or spin up a Docker playground:

iceberg-meta quickstart        # starts MinIO, seeds data, configures everything
iceberg-meta quickstart --down # tear down when done

Commands

Command	Description
demo	Try instantly -- temp local catalog, no setup needed
quickstart	Docker playground with MinIO + sample data
init	Interactive config setup with catalog presets
doctor	Validate config, env vars, and connectivity
list-tables	Discover namespaces and tables
summary <table>	Row counts, file counts, recent operations
health <table>	File sizes, partition skew, column nulls, column bounds
table-info <table>	Format version, UUID, schema, partition spec, properties
snapshots <table>	Snapshot history (--watch N for live monitoring)
schema <table>	Schema tree (--history for evolution with diffs)
manifests <table>	Manifest files for current or specified snapshot
files <table>	Data files with sizes, row counts, format
partitions <table>	Partition statistics
snapshot-detail <table> <id>	Deep dive into one snapshot
diff <table> <s1> <s2>	What changed between two snapshots
tree <table>	Full metadata hierarchy as a tree
tui	Interactive terminal UI

Every data command supports --output json and --output csv.

Use Cases

Pre-merge validation in CI/CD

Confirm a pipeline write actually landed before merging:

iceberg-meta summary staging.orders          # row count, file count, latest snapshot
iceberg-meta diff staging.orders $OLD $NEW   # what changed between two snapshots
iceberg-meta files staging.orders -o csv     # pipe file-level stats into a check script

Debugging failing writes

Spark job "succeeded" but downstream dashboards are empty:

iceberg-meta snapshots staging.orders        # did the snapshot actually land?
iceberg-meta schema staging.orders --history # did a schema evolution break compatibility?
iceberg-meta files staging.orders            # are the new data files present and non-empty?

Monitoring table health

Spot small-file problems, partition skew, and compaction needs before they impact query performance:

iceberg-meta health warehouse.events

The health report covers file sizes (min/avg/median/max with small-file warnings), delete file accumulation, partition skew detection, column null rates, column storage distribution, and column value bounds.

Live monitoring

Watch for new snapshots as a pipeline runs:

iceberg-meta snapshots warehouse.events --watch 5

Onboarding and knowledge transfer

New team member needs to understand the data platform:

iceberg-meta tui

Incident response

Production data looks wrong — find when the issue was introduced:

iceberg-meta snapshots prod.customers        # find the suspicious snapshot IDs
iceberg-meta diff prod.customers 111 222     # compare record counts and file changes
iceberg-meta tree prod.customers             # drill into manifests and data files

Scripting and automation

Pipe machine-readable output into alerts or dashboards:

FILE_COUNT=$(iceberg-meta -o json summary db.events | jq '.file_count')
[ "$FILE_COUNT" -gt 1000 ] && echo "Small file problem detected"

iceberg-meta -o csv snapshots db.events > snapshots.csv
iceberg-meta -o json health db.events | jq '.[] | select(.Section == "Column Nulls")'

See it in action

$ iceberg-meta summary sales.orders

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                     sales.orders  Summary                       │
├──────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Format version       │ 2                                        │
│ Total snapshots      │ 4                                        │
│ Total data files     │ 1                                        │
│ Total records        │ 15                                       │
│ Total size           │ 5.2 KB                                   │
│ Partition spec       │ region (identity)                        │
├──────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Recent Operations                                               │
│  overwrite   2025-02-28 19:04    +15 rows   -60 rows            │
│  append      2025-02-28 19:04    +20 rows   -0 rows             │
│  append      2025-02-28 19:04    +15 rows   -0 rows             │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

$ iceberg-meta schema sales.customers --history

Schema 0  (initial)
├── customer_id: long
├── name: string
└── email: string

Schema 1  (+2 fields)
├── phone: string          ← added
└── signup_date: date      ← added

Schema 2  (1 rename)
└── email_address: string  ← renamed from email

TUI Keybindings

Key	Action
1-7	Switch tabs (Summary, Snapshots, Schema, Files, Manifests, Health, Tree)
d	Diff two snapshots
s	Snapshot detail
r	Refresh
?	Help
q	Quit

Configuration

Run iceberg-meta init for interactive setup, or create ~/.iceberg-meta.yaml manually. Credentials use ${VAR} placeholders resolved from the environment -- secrets never touch disk.

See docs/configuration.md for full details, environment variable overrides, and .env file support.

License

MIT