OTF supports integration of the BigLake metastore with the Iceberg REST Catalog by using existing name-value pairs (NVPs) in the CREATE DATALAKE statement. These NVPs were originally introduced for the Apache Gravitino/Polaris REST catalog but are reused here for BigLake.
The CREATE DATALAKE statement includes two main configuration areas:
Metadata and Storage Behavior
BigLake manages its own metastore, while OTF interacts with metadata through the Iceberg REST Catalog.
The BigLake API must be enabled in the customer’s Google Cloud environment so that Iceberg metadata files can be committed to a GCS bucket.
During query execution:
- Metadata operations use the BigLake REST API
- Parquet data files are read and written directly from Google Cloud Storage using OTF’s execution engine
This separation allows metadata to be governed by BigLake while data access is handled efficiently by Teradata OTF.