A Datalake stores a large amount of structured and unstructured information. The data is typically stored in files organized into folders based on timestamps, in formats such as Parquet and Avro.
Datalakes are low-cost and flexible and provide the following data warehouse-like properties:
- Efficient data access and management
- Guaranteed ACID transactions
- Schema evolution
- Partition evolution
- Time travel
An open table format provides the preceding characteristics by overlaying a table format on groups of files in a Datalake, allowing you to treat those groups as a single table.
See Data Lake Statements.