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Firebolt’s Apache Iceberg write capabilities are currently in public preview. We are gathering feedback and expanding support for this feature.
Creates an Apache Iceberg table in object storage, and exports data into it based on the SELECT query. The table column names and types are automatically inferred based on the output columns of the SELECT.

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Syntax

CREATE ICEBERG TABLE <table_name>
AS <select_query>
WITH LOCATION = <location_name> [<setting_name> = <setting_value> ...]

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Parameters

ParameterDescription
<table_name>Table name. Currently not used, but a value must be provided.
<select_query>Any valid select query.
<location_name>The name of an Iceberg LOCATION object with CATALOG = FILE_BASED.
<setting_name>The name of a system setting.
<setting_value>The value to assign to system setting <setting_name>.

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Example

The following example writes the results of a SELECT query into a new Iceberg table at s3://my-bucket/path/to/iceberg/output. 
CREATE LOCATION my_location
WITH 
  SOURCE = ICEBERG
  CATALOG = FILE_BASED
  CATALOG_OPTIONS = (
    URL = 's3://my-bucket/path/to/iceberg/output'
  )
  CREDENTIALS = ( ... );

CREATE ICEBERG TABLE my_iceberg_table
  AS SELECT * FROM my_firebolt_table
    WHERE timestamp_col >= TIMESTAMP '2025-10-01'
WITH LOCATION = my_location;

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Limitations:

  • Catalogs: only supports a FILE_BASED catalog in AWS S3 object storage. I.e. the data and metadata files will be written to the specified location in S3.
  • Data types: supports the Iceberg equivelents of Firebolt’s data types, except GEOGRAPHY.
  • Partitions: currently does not support writing partitioned tables.
  • Metadata: only writes limited metadata that is optional per the Iceberg spec. Does not write column statistics, etc.
  • DML operations on Iceberg tables are not supported. Only the CREATE ICEBERG TABLE AS SELECT and SELECT from READ_ICEBERG(...) operations are supported for Iceberg tables.