Delta Lake

Delta Lake is an open table format created by Databricks and governed under the Linux Foundation. Like Apache Iceberg, it provides ACID transactions, schema evolution, time travel, and deletion vectors over Parquet files — the two formats have largely converged on capabilities.

Its strength is platform gravity: Delta is the native format of Databricks and Microsoft Fabric, where it’s the lowest-friction choice by far. Delta Lake 4.0’s Kernel gives non-Spark engines one consistent library, and UniForm writes Iceberg metadata alongside Delta’s own, letting a single physical table be read by Iceberg-expecting engines. The practical 2026 rule: Delta inside Databricks/Fabric, Iceberg for the open multi-engine world.

Go deeper: Iceberg vs Delta Lake: How to Actually Choose in 2026