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# Amazon S3 Tables now support all Apache Iceberg V3 data types

**[AWS](https://daily.dev/sources/aws)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Amazon S3 Tables now fully support the Apache Iceberg V3 specification, letting teams create new V3 tables or upgrade existing V2 tables in place. V3 adds deletion vectors (replacing V2 positional delete files for faster compliance deletes), automatic row lineage fields (_row_id and _last_updated_sequence_number) for incremental pipelines, and new data types including variant, nanosecond timestamp(tz), geometry, geography, and unknown. The new data types require an engine on Apache Spark 4.0+, such as AWS Glue 6.0+ or Amazon EMR 8.1+, and only work with Parquet-formatted tables. The upgrade from V2 to V3 is one-way and available at no additional charge across all AWS regions where S3 Tables are supported.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-s3-tables-now-support-all-apache-iceberg-v3-data-types>

## Questions this post answers

### What new data types does Apache Iceberg V3 add that S3 Tables now support?

Apache Iceberg V3 adds variant, nanosecond timestamp(tz), geometry, geography, and unknown data types, all now supported in Amazon S3 Tables. Variant stores semi-structured data in columnar format with file-pruning statistics, while geometry and geography enable native geospatial storage instead of encoding as strings or integers.

_Explore daily.dev for more on adopting Iceberg V3 data types in analytics pipelines._

### What engine version do I need to use Iceberg V3 data types like variant or geometry in S3 Tables?

The new V3 data types (variant, nanosecond timestamps, geometry, geography, and unknown) require an engine built on Apache Spark 4.0 or later, such as AWS Glue 6.0 or later, or Amazon EMR release 8.1 or later. These types are also supported only for tables using the Parquet file format, not ORC or Avro.

_Check daily.dev when planning engine upgrades needed for Iceberg V3 features._

### Can I downgrade an Iceberg table from V3 back to V2 after upgrading?

No, upgrading an Iceberg table to V3 is a one-way operation since the Apache Iceberg specification does not support downgrading from V3 to V2. Existing V2 readers continue working on upgraded tables until V3 features are fully adopted, so all engines accessing the table should be verified as V3-compatible before upgrading.

_Weigh migration risks like this one-way Iceberg upgrade by following daily.dev._

## Similar posts on daily.dev

- [Amazon S3 Tables now support the Variant data type for Apache Iceberg V3](https://daily.dev/posts/amazon-s3-tables-now-support-the-variant-data-type-for-apache-iceberg-v3-a7ltmew4l) · AWS · 0 upvotes · 0 comments
- [Amazon Redshift now supports Apache Iceberg v3 tables](https://daily.dev/posts/amazon-redshift-now-supports-apache-iceberg-v3-tables-lh6g9nkhk) · AWS · 0 upvotes · 0 comments
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Tags: [#aws](https://daily.dev/tags/aws), [#data-engineering](https://daily.dev/tags/data-engineering), [#apache-spark](https://daily.dev/tags/apache-spark), [#apache-iceberg](https://daily.dev/tags/apache-iceberg)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/amazon-s3-tables-now-support-all-apache-iceberg-v3-data-types-nkjnu2oqj)

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